Is Crypto the Investment for me?
As you guys may very well know, I am not a financial advisor or planner, I may be an accountant but i’m no expert in tax advice nor investment advice. I do however write for my website The Little Dollar and the articles there are hopefully everything you want them to be. :)
But with personal finance and investing in the digital age comes digitial currencies. And not just the number on the screen at the ATM.
Now I do love Bitcoin and I currently hold a few different coins, Bitcoin mostly but others for speculations. I also do my research on Bitcoin podcasts such as What Bitcoin Did, and blogs like In Bitcoin We Trust. Of course I am not an expert so please do not take this as financial advice and only accept this is a personal finance junkie who loves all various investments.
I would have to say Bitcoin for me is my way to the top. I plan on buying as much coin as I can get my little hands on until the price skyrockets to $100 million a coin and we measure our economies on the great global currency BTC. But until then we must talk about if bitcoin is right for you to grow your wealth and financial status in the coming years.
What Bitcoin is and what it means-
Bitcoin is just a digital currency based around blockchain technology. It was created back in 2008 during the financial crisis and was commonly understood to be the money of drug dealers and criminals.
A few key facts about Bitcoin would be
- The first bitcoins that were used to purchase pizza on May 22nd 2010. 10,000 bitcoins were exchanged for a few large pizzas. This marks a time in bitcoin history where retailers started to accept this as money and payments for goods and services. The cost of the Bitcoins at the time of purchase was around $41. Currently the cost is around $67 million dollars.
- When Bitcoins whitepaper came out, the founding document of what Bitcoin was meant to be, it came out by author Satoshi Nakamoto. Satoshi is a mystery and nobody really knows who or whom this person or group of people are. This is why the individual denomonations of bitcoin are called satoshis or sats. (you can purchase as small as 0.00000001 bitcoins if you so please)
- Bitcoin is not completely untrackable, with things like your public address users of the public ledger can see your bitcoins and track your transactions. This is how the FBI has busted the owner of the Silk Road, a decentralized marketplace where users purchased various items such as food, clothing, medicine, and even drugs and hitman services.
- If you lose your private keys, you lose your bitcoins. They are gone and there is no way to ever retrieve them. James Howells was an IT guy who mined over 7500 coins and one day threw away his harddrive. The estimated cost of these coins now is $50 million.
- There will only ever be 21 million coins, minus what has been lost. Ever. there are just around 18.5 million coins in curculation and the last coins will be mined in 2140. After that no new coins will ever be issued.
- You can buy stuff with bitcoins. Starbucks, Tesla and even Lambroginins are avaliable for purchase with bitcoin.
Popular Coins and what they do-
Bitcoin- the main crypto currency. Used as a decentrialzed money. (all others are known as altcoins)
Ethereum- a coin used for the Ethereum platform, where users can create tokens and smart contracts for thier projects.
Ripple- Ripple is a blockchain used by global banks to make payments faster. The basis of Ripple is surrounded by global banks partnerships.
Litecoin- Litecoin is a fork off of bitcoin and considered an improvement upon the initial cryptocurrency. Litecoin is faster and cheaper than Bitcoin to use, and with solutions like the Lightning Network to work on scalability of Bitcoin. (if you send $5 to a friend, Bitcoin is slow and costly for this transaction.)
Resources to use.
Top Wallet choices- Ledger wallets get high ratings as well as Trezor Wallets.
Mobile Wallet choices- Currently I have yet to find a quality wallet, Dropbit was good but now I am currently using BreadWallet.
Exchanges- Coinbase is giving me the cheapest fees for altcoins and Cashapp is doing well for Bitcoins. Also check out Kraken or your wallet.
If this article helped you!
Please share it with your friends, and if you wish to support my efforts consider making a donation of BTC at this address. I hope to one day open a Bitcoin themed publication here on Medium!
BTC- 1Mo7X7khhiGs1EqdraHNp9hVkqLYyv5EJ5
