Why Use Bitcoin ?
Bitcoin is a relatively new form of currency that is just beginning
to hit the mainstream, but many people still don’t understand why they
should make the effort to use it. Here are ten good reasons why it’s
worth taking the time to get involved in this virtual currency.
It’s fast
When
you pay a cheque from another bank into your bank, the bank will often
hold that money for several days, because it can’t trust that the funds
are really there. Similarly, international wire transfers can take a
relatively long time.
Bitcoin
transactions are generally far faster. Transactions can be
instantaneous if they are “zero-confirmation” transactions, meaning that
the merchant takes on the risk of accepting a transaction that hasn’t
yet been confirmed by the block chain.
Or, they can take around ten minutes if a merchant requires the
transaction to be confirmed. That’s far faster than any inter-bank
transfer.
It’s cheap
What’s that you say? Your credit card
transactions are instantaneous too? Well, that’s true. But your
merchant (and possibly you) pay for that privilege. Some merchants will
charge a fee for debit card transactions too, as they have to pay a
‘swipe fee’ for fulfilling them. Bitcoin transaction fees are minimal,
or in many cases, free.
Central governments can’t take it away
Remember what happened in Cyprus in March 2013?
The Central Bank decided to take back uninsured deposits larger than
$100,000 to help recapitalize itself, causing huge unrest in the local
population. It originally wanted to take a percentage of deposits below
that figure, eating directly into family savings.
That can’t
happen with bitcoins. Because the currency is decentralized, you own it.
No central authority has control, and so a bank can’t take it away from
you. For those who find their trust in the traditional banking system
eroding, that’s a big benefit.
There are no chargebacks
Once
bitcoins have been sent, they’re gone. A person who has sent bitcoins
cannot try to retrieve them without the recipient’s consent. This makes
it difficult to commit the kind of fraud that we often see with credit
cards, in which people make a purchase and then contact the credit card
company to make a chargeback, effectively reversing the transaction.
People can’t steal your important information from merchants
This
is a big one. Most online purchases today are made via credit cards,
but in the twenties and thirties, when the first precursors to credit
cards appeared, the Internet hadn’t been conceived. Credit cards were
never supposed to be used online. They are insecure. Online forms
require you to enter all your secret information (the credit card
number, expiry date, and CSV number) into a web form. It would be more
difficult to think of a less secure way to do business. This is why
credit card numbers keep being stolen.
Bitcoin transactions don’t
require you to give up any secret information. Instead, they use two
keys: a public key, and a private one. Anyone can see the public key
(which is actually your bitcoin address) but your private key is secret.
When you send a bitcoin, you ‘sign’ the transaction by combining your
public and private keys together, and applying a mathematical function
to them. This creates a certificate that proves the transaction came
from you. As long as you don’t do anything silly like publishing your
private key for everyone to see, you’re safe.
It isn’t inflationary
The
problem with regular fiat currency is that governments can print as
much of it as they like, and they frequently do. If there are not enough
US dollars to pay off the national debt, then the Federal Reserve can
simply print more. This causes the value of a currency to decrease. If
you suddenly double the number of dollars in circulation, then that
means there are two dollars where before there was only one. Someone who
had been selling a chocolate bar for a dollar will have to double the
price to make it worth the same as it was before, because a dollar
suddenly has only half its value.
This is called inflation, and it
causes the price of goods and services to increase. Inflation can be
difficult to control, and can decrease people’s buying power.
Bitcoin
was designed to have a maximum number of coins. Only 21 million will
ever be created under the original specification. This means that after
that, the number of bitcoins won’t grow, so inflation won’t be a
problem. In fact, deflation – where the price of goods and services
falls – is more of a problem for bitcoin than inflation.
It’s as private as you want it to be
Sometimes,
we don’t want people knowing what we have purchased. Bitcoin is a
relatively private currency. On the one hand, it is transparent;
everyone knows how much a particular bitcoin address holds in
transactions. They know where those transactions came from, and where
they’re sent.
On the other hand, unlike conventional bank
accounts, no one knows who holds a particular bitcoin address. It’s like
having a clear plastic wallet with no visible owner. Everyone can look
inside it, but no one knows whose it is.
You don’t need to trust anyone else
In
a conventional banking system, you have to trust people to handle your
money properly along the way. You have to trust the bank, for example.
You might have to trust a third-party payment processor. You’ll often
have to trust the merchant, too. These organizations demand important,
sensitive pieces of information from you.
Because bitcoin is
entirely decentralized, you need trust no one when using it. When you
send a transaction, it is digitally signed, and secure. An unknown miner
will verify it, and then the transaction is completed. The merchant
need not even know who you are, unless you’ve arranged to tell them.
You own it
There
is no other electronic cash system in which your account isn’t owned by
someone else. Take PayPal, for example: if the company decides for some
reason that your account has been misused, it has the power to freeze
all of the assets held in the account, without consulting you. It is
then up to you to jump through whatever hoops necessary to get it
cleared so that you can access your funds. With bitcoin, you own the
private key and the corresponding public key that makes up a bitcoin
address. No one can take that away from you (unless you lose it
yourself).
You can make bitcoins yourself
In spite of the
amazing advances in home office colour printing technology, most
national governments take a fairly dim view of you producing your own
money. With bitcoin, however, it is encouraged. You can certainly buy
bitcoins on the open market, but you can also mine your own
if you have enough computing power. After covering your initial
investment in equipment and electricity, mining bitcoins is akin to
producing money out of thin air. And who wouldn’t like their computer to
earn them money while they sleep?
Source : coindesk.com
thx for informations ...
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