Introduction: Can Bitcoin Usher In the Digital Currency Age? The Bitcoin network was started on January 3, 2009 and the first Bitcoins were issued. Only one year later official exchange rates were set for Bitcoins. Bitcoins as an example of a purely digital currency carry with them both risks, and benefits, but I feel that the risks will be outweighed by the benefits:
• Small Risk of Inflation
• Small Risk of Collapse
• Safe and Cheap Transactions
• Easily Transported
• Virtually Untraceable
This last benefit is also a risk as having an untraceable currency lends itself to be sought after for criminal activities as it is potentially harder to be traced to its source than cash, the current go to for criminal activity. This will likely
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This is because there are simply a finite number of Bitcoins that will ever be available to the public (roughly twenty-one million). Since its inception the release of Bitcoins has slowed down quite a bit, and within a few decades the limited number of Bitcoins left will all be released through being found by the “minig” processes. It is theorized that this will happen around the same time that the world population is thought to stop growing. The population level off, though it has many dates and population sizes associated with it, averages out to about one Bitcoin for every 500 people in the world. Due to its nature the standard can be set to establish what a truly finite currency would mean for the world as a whole, and will help to remove what is essentially a tax on accumulated wealth when more money is being printed. While this doesn’t seem to be as prominent her in the United States other countries suffer from far greater inflation issues and Bitcoins are being used in lieu of the official currency as “TradeHill, a US-based bitcoin exchange, is now planning to open an office in Argentina where demand is fastest in the region. (Webber, 2013)” These facts couple well with the smaller risk of a complete collapse of the Bitcoin currency, or a purely digital currency, as it is not directly tied into a government entity, and will not live and die by the viability of that government entity. If one government were to fall the effect on
In the beginning of the use of fiat currency, many governments backed the value of the currency with gold. For a while, thirty five United States Dollars could be traded for 1 Troy ounce of gold at a bank. Today however, the USD is no longer backed by gold. Most money today is “just worthless paper”, and if the government endorsing that money fails, it turns that currency into useless paper. (This is causes hyperinflation and recently happened to the Zimbabwean dollar.)
Throughout the book The Fatal Equilibrium, we meet Henry Spearman a professor and quite a scholar and professor from Harvard University. We see him describe the world of economics how he sees it in day to day encounters. In our book The Fatal Equilibrium, we see our main character Henry Spearman in chapter six shopping with his daughter at Finley’s Basement. All of the definitions I located on page 45 were (Law of demand, Quantity of demand, utility maximizing, price, economic analysis, profit-seeking, and organized economy.
When someone says the word immigration, what comes to your mind? Some that came to a country when they aren’t really supposed to be there? A person that leaves their country to go to a new? From place to place? Although that is partly true, it’s not the whole truth. They have many reasons to come here, like wars and inequality. If they are going through this, then why do our peers in America discriminate them. If we were in their shoes, would we want more problems?
Dollar devaluations, ongoing global geopolitical concerns, wars and rumors of wars, all point to very unstable and uncertain times. Simply put, fiat, or paper money, will always collapse if the government that issued it also goes south.
“It’s real food,” Jeremy Enfinger, Executive Chef at Livingston’s The County Seat restaurant says with zeal in speaking about his current creation as the brains behind the community of Livingston’s new restaurant.
A man of dignity and intrepidity, Shakespeare’s Macbeth in the tragic play “Macbeth” had once embodied these majestic traits and left others around him awestruck in merely inspiration, yearning to echo his footsteps. His courageous escapades had also succeeded in winning over King Duncan of Scotland during a battle in which he defeated King Sweno of Norway. Yet, farther into the play, Macbeth’s character seemingly transforms into a man of ruthlessness and vulnerability. He becomes a “tragic hero” after his confrontation with the witches, the stern lectures of his wife (Lady Macbeth), and ultimately, the immoral human nature of greed.
Cryptocurrency is a digital asset that serves as a medium of exchange with no central authority and was created to prevent the issue of double spending. This problem is solved with the use of blockchains where miners confirm transactions on a public ledger. As of today, there are over 1,000 different types of cryptocurrencies, and at least 600 of these have listed market caps of over $100,000. Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin are top cryptocurrencies trading today with their combined market cap topping $331B. Bitcoin, created in 2009, is the biggest cryptocurrency and has recently reached a net value of over $270 billion, with much of its growth being in the last few months. This has led to much
Without a bank to manage the supply of this crypto currency, the price is unregulated and proves to be extremely volatile. This price fluctuation is one quality that is holding the legitimacy of Bitcoin back because it needs a consistent value for practical use in the monetary world. As speculative investors buy and sell Bitcoin, the price varies at extreme rates. But in support of Bitcoin’s long-term future, the price has shown a steady uptrend in the past year, peaking at around $1200 (See Apendix I). Eventually, a steady value will be reached to establish the actual price of Bitcoin.
Ever since the US dollar went off the gold standard in 1971, other countries have had doubts about keeping the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. The first concern was that no fiat currency has succeeded long-term. In a study of 775 fiat currencies (Mack, 2011), there was no historical precedence for a fiat currency that has succeeded in holding its value. 20 percent failed through hyperinflation, 21 percent were destroyed by war, 12 percent destroyed by independence, 24 percent were monetarily reformed, and 23 percent are still in circulation approaching one of the other outcomes (Mack, 2011). The average life expectancy for a fiat currency is 27 years, with the shortest life span being one month (Mack, 2011). It is one thing if an individual country’s fiat currency collapses, but if a world reserve currency collapses, such as the US dollar, the world’s economy will collapse with it.
It’s important to note that since Bitcoins are produced without the involvement of governments or banks, they avoid taxes. Lastly, the cap of 21 million bitcoins has driven the value of a single coin up as shown by the below graph depicting expected growth of coins over time.
We take the position that digital currencies are a fad. As argument, we try to clarify the definition of currency in general and explain what a "digital currency" really mean. Than we examine the arguments for the digital currencies and at the end we present the evidences of perils of digital currency.
In all seriousness, while many are adopting the cryptocurrency, it must be said that the integration of the
Bitcoin is a fully decentralized virtual currency system. This fascinating new model of commerce has recently spawned a lively public debate regarding the inherent risks and merits of the system. It is the position of this paper that Bitcoin is favourable to fiat currencies for cashless payments due to Bitcoin’s numerous socioeconomic benefits. It is globally accessible; allowing any business or individual to securely send and receive payments anywhere, at any time, with or without a bank account. As no government or individual has full ownership or control, the cryptocurrency is free of transaction fees, it’s low-risk, and most importantly it’s private. Regardless, many critics of Bitcoin denounce the currency as dangerously unsanctioned and criminal; SOMTHING. Other critics disregard Bitcoin as unintuitive, overly-complex, or simply too new to be trusted. This paper will demonstrate however, that these concerns of criminal use and unintuitive complexity are at best exaggerated or misunderstood. Finally, as the concept of a cryptocurrency is remarkably new, this paper will illustrate Bitcoin’s extraordinary potential: increased security, flexible transparency, and new payment opportunities.
currency system, as long as it is an inanimate object, someone will try to copy
The policy of cryptocurrencies tends to be different across the world where the government can support or resist the implementation of cryptocurrencies (DeVries, 2016). For instance, the US government is likely to support cryptocurrencies by allowing those digital currencies to be used as local currencies (Hillard Heintze, 2014). In the UK, however, the government opposes by withdraw research grants in Bitcoin because of the stockpiling bitcoin (Chan et al., 2017). Although China is considered as the best place to mine bitcoin because of its cost efficiency, in 2013,