Record rate bitcoin
In February, the price of bitcoin crossed the $ 50 thousand mark, according to the data of the Binance crypto exchange. Thus, the value of the currency has renewed its historical maximum again, reaching a peak value of $ 50,689.
Bitcoin rate
Then the bitcoin rate fell slightly, but remained close to record values.
The bitcoin price has been growing at a rapid pace since the end of October last year:
- In mid-November, for the first time since December 2017, its price crossed the $ 18 thousand mark.
- On December 31, the currency value reached almost $ 29 thousand, although until October it did not rise above $ 12.3 thousand.
- As of January 1, 2020, its price was at the level of $ 7, 2 thousand, and on the same date 2021 – $ 29.4 thousand.
The growth in the value of bitcoin accelerated after on February 8, Elon Musk’s company Tesla announced the purchase of BTC for $ 1.5 billion to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The bitcoin dominance index, reflecting how much it prevails over other cryptocurrencies, rose 0.7% in 24 hours. Now it accounts for 61.36% of their total capitalization, according to Coinmarketcap data. Cryptocurrency capitalization has almost reached $ 924 billion.
Main features
Bitcoin is a decentralized cryptocurrency originally described in a 2008 whitepaper by a person or group of people under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. It was launched shortly thereafter, in January 2009. Bitcoin pair are very popular. You can get 1 eth to btc on every exchange.
When Bitcoin was created, the main idea was to make not analogs of paper currency, but an analogue of gold – that which most of modern money is confirmed by. What distinguishes gold from dollars, euros, hryvnias or rubles? Gold is a limited resource. The gold cannot be mined more than there is in nature. Of course, you can create some gold, for example, by bombarding mercury with heavy neutrons, but its amount will be extremely scanty, and the state of the isotopes obtained is unstable.
To get gold, you need to get it. This takes the time of people who are directly involved in this. As a result, a kilogram of mined gold can be equated to the man-hours required for its extraction and further used as an equivalent of free labor, i.e. currency.
Something similar is happening with Bitcoin. The number of “coins” is limited to 21 million. When the total supply of bitcoins reaches this value, any further emission will cease to prevent inflation. And mining bitcoins requires certain costs. If in the case of gold mining takes human labor, the mining of bitcoins takes the “labor” of a computer.
If for the extraction of gold a person must take the rock, wash it and thus separate the gold from everything else, then for the extraction of bitcoin the processor needs to solve a number of mathematical problems. If the result meets all the criteria, bitcoin is created.
