ADVANTAGES OF BITCOINS

                                                  ADVANTAGES OF BITCOINS..

                                           

                               

What Are The Advantages And Disadvantages Of Bitcoins ?

Discussing the Advantages and Disadvantages of Bitcoins

Bitcoin, world’s first decentralized digital person-to-person cryptocurrency, is considered to be a revolution In present currency market. This virtual currency is gaining huge popularity worldwide and mass adoption.In this article, I have listed out some of the advantages and disadvantages of Bitcoins.

Initially, Bitcoin faced a lot of criticism from each part of the world and was considered to be a scam due to it’s several negative factors. But over the time when experts from various sectors started examining Bitcoins,they understood the power of digital currencies and started to look it in a positive way. Although Bitcoin has many advantages as compared to the present system of Paper Money, it also carries various disadvantages as well.

Kryptomoney.com aims to educate people about Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain Technology . Following is a list of advantages and disadvantages of Bitcoins:-

Advantages of Bitcoins

Anonymous and Private

Bitcoin transactions are completely anonymous and private. Unlike in payments through bank, where the transactions can be tracked and identified, bitcoin transactions cannot be identified.  A person can only know the addresses of bitcoins on which the payment has been sent and received. But  to whom these addresses belong cannot be identified. It’s like payment to a particular bank account can be tracked but to whom these accounts belong cannot be known. ( but if a person uses same bitcoin address for every transaction for a long period of time, there is possibility that the person can be tracked)

Payment Freedom

Paying through bitcoins provide us the utmost freedom. Bitcoins can be sent to any person in any part of the world. No intermediaries in between. No bank holidays/strikes. No boundaries or borders. No payment limit.

Low/Minimal Fees

Paying through Bitcoin has very low and sometimes no transaction fees at all. It all depends on the priority of the person. If a person wishes that his/her transaction get’s processed fast, he has to pay a transaction fees which is still very low as compared to any financial intermediary or digital wallets.

Fewer risks for merchants

Bitcoin transactions are secure, irreversible, and does not contain any customers’sensitive or personal information.This protects merchants from losses caused by fraud or fraudulent chargebacks.

It’s fast

Bitcoin transactions are very fast if compared to banking channels. A bitcoin transaction is as fast an e-mail and can be processed with in 10 minutes. Also it can be instantly processed 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 bitcoinblockchain. The confirmed transactions are those which takes 10 minutes to process. Credit Card or digital wallet services also provides instant approved transactions services but for this the merchants providing the services usually charges a hefty fees for it, which is not in the case of Bitcoin as mentioned above too. Bitcoin has very low transaction fees even for being super fast in terms of processing.

Central governments can’t take it away

“I promise to pay the bearer a sum of one thousand rupees” but do we get the gold if we go to reserve bank. The answer is “NO”. Similarly government says that a paper note can have value upto Rs 1000 but what if the other government when in power demonetizes it and says that it is a waste and does not holds any value? Result being, the consumers loosing their financial worth and credibility.

This is not in the case of Bitcoins. Government cannot take back your Bitcoins as it is decentralized and no one has control over it. The maximum is that the government can ban it but still your bitcoins has some value in those market/places/regions where it is still legal and thus can be cashed

People can’t steal your payment information from merchants

Perhaps this is a biggest advantage that Bitcoin has. Most online purchases today are made via credit cards,debit cards . requiring you to enter all your secret information (the credit card number, expiry date, and CSV number) into a web form This is why credit card numbers keep being stolen.

Bitcoin transactions, however, don’t require you to give up any secret information. Instead, they use two keys: a public key, and a private key. The public key, as the name suggests is public and anyone can see it (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.

Non-Inflationary

Perhaps, this is the reason why Bitcoin is called the Future of Money. Generally, the central government can get fiat currencies printed as much as they want. When the economy is slowing down it is not able to pay off it’s national debt, the government orders to print more currency and inject it into the economy. This causes the value of currency to decrease as more people have more currency. Also printing more notes creates inflation and increases the prices of commodity. It is because now more people is willing to pay for a particular commodity and the seller has to increase the price in order to make the sale. Thus, the person who had gained when government injected more currency can now buy more but those people who were not benefitted from have limited currency and now the prices of commodity has also increased.

On the other hand , this is not the case in Bitcoins. Only 21 million Bitcoins will ever be created and this is known to everyone. This means that after all the Bitcoins have matured, more number of bitcoins cannot grow and thus inflation won’t be a problem.

You can create your own money

As central government can print it’s own money, similarly any person can also produce bitcoins by yourself. This can be done my mining bitcoins through computers. It is not any kind of physical mining. Bitcoin mining is simply a case of leaving the computer switched on, and keep the bitcoin mining software running. Read more about mining here.

Well the above were just the positive sides of Bitcoin. But it also has some disadvantages as well.

Disadvantages of Bitcoins

Degree of acceptance

Many people are still unaware of Bitcoin. Every day, more businesses accept bitcoins because they want the advantages of doing so, but the list remains small and still needs to grow in order to benefit from network effects.

Volatility

Bitcoin prices are very volatile and increases/decreases at a very high pace. Speculators wish to take advantage of it but genuine investors thinks of it as too risky and therefore all the investors does not invest in Bitcoins.

Ongoing development

Bitcoin software is still in beta with many incomplete features in active development. New tools, features, and services are being developed to make Bitcoin more secure and accessible to the masses. Some of these are still not ready for everyone. Most Bitcoin businesses are new and still offer no insurance.

Possible Government Interference

Well the government may not take your Bitcoins away but can ban it in the country, which forces bitcoin wallets and companies to shut down. The bitcoins in these wallets are freezed and access to them becomes difficult.

Deflationary

We discussed that how Bitcoin being on-inflationary can be an advantage to the economy. But one possible negative factor attached to Bitcoin because of being deflationary is that if it gets in the hands of speculator a huge recession will come in Bitcoins.

Bitcoins are limited in number and if the major chunk is held by speculators and investors, they will hold it for a longer period of time and won’t release it in the market. When the supply of bitcoin will be short and demand continues to increase, it will increase the price of Bitcoins and then the investors can get benefit.

Lack of recourse

If you lose the wallet which had bitcoins stored in it, you have lost all of your bitcoins in that wallet. You cannot regain it and they are simply lost forever.

In case credit card/debit card stolen, we can call the merchant to cancel the card and request for a new one but in case of Bitcoins, as it is decentralized and no one has control over it , we don’t have any person to call.

Money Laundering/Black Market

Initially bitcoins were used for money laundering and people operating in black markets, which did not wanted to reveal their personal information and get payment secured. In money laundering middleman/intermediaries would collect money from one source and transfer it to another source through Bitcoins.

Conclusion

Overall Bitcoins may have many advantages and disadvantages but it is upto the people and society in which ways does they use it.

UK/US have been using Bitcoins as smoothly like Fiat Currencies. On April 1 ,Japan also recognized Bitcoin as an official mode of payment and implemented tax policies on it as well (click here to read full article in detail)

I hope you have learned some of the advantages and disadvantages of Bitcoins through this article.Leave your thoughts in the comments section below the article.