Bitcoins Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Bitcoins - Essay Example These bitcoins serve as money for all types of payments and receipts on the web. Individuals can maintain their own bitcoin wallet, where these bitcoins are debited or credited. Since this is a peer-to-peer currency, it does not require any central authority to issue currency or track transactions (The Economic Times, 2014). The concept of bitcoins was first published in a newspaper in 2008. However, it was only in 2009 that the first online wallet software for transacting bitcoins was released. It was called Bitcoin-Qt. Nonetheless, this software initially was poorly developed and many of its features were exploited to create more and more bitcoins. Later on, a team of core developers and experts of software were employed to monitor, develop and enhance the bitcoin way of transacting. Since then, use of bitcoins has rapidly increased. Also, there have been considerable fluctuations in the price of bitcoins. The price of bitcoins had reached its peak in 2013, during the Cypriot financial crisis. From the initial days of inception, the bitcoin system has suffered plenty of glitches with respect to technology and software system that it was based on. This was largely due to lack of proper governance and management of the software. The system was found to crash multiple times. So, individuals were not real ly eager to use it as a system of online money. Bitcoins were largely used in online gaming versions, where individuals on winning points were credited with bitcoins. Hence, only youngsters and teenagers were found to take interest in this system. Soon as greater regulations were incorporated in this sector, bitcoin exchanges were regulated whereby they were required to submit reports of bitcoin transfers. Gradually, more and more business firms and non-profit groups started to accept this form of exchange. Currently, BTC China, which is a Chinese bitcoin exchange, is the largest bitcoin exchange in the world by virtue of trade volume.