Bitcoin: The truth and the investment path in the fog

In today's digital age, Bitcoin has attracted the attention of countless investors with its unique charm. However, controversy and doubts surrounding Bitcoin have also arisen one after another. Many people are asking: Is Bitcoin a big scam? How many people are really involved in this virtual currency game? This article will explore the nature of Bitcoin, the current market situation, and the real experience of participants, hoping to help readers clarify this foggy investment road.

The origin of Bitcoin can be traced back to 2009, when an anonymous person named Satoshi Nakamoto published the Bitcoin white paper, proposing a decentralized currency based on blockchain technology. This concept quickly attracted global attention, and many people were looking forward to its potential investment value. Since then, the price of Bitcoin has experienced a leap from zero to tens of thousands of dollars today, becoming the world's highest-valued cryptocurrency. Although the technology and concept behind it are exciting, it is accompanied by various doubts and controversies.

In the eyes of many people, Bitcoin seems to be a huge scam. Especially after its price skyrocketed, many investors followed suit blindly in pursuit of profits, which eventually led to huge losses. For example, when the price of Bitcoin soared to a high of nearly $20,000 in 2017, countless investors flocked in. However, the subsequent market crash caused many people to suffer heavy losses, and some even lost their entire fortunes. This phenomenon has led to widespread discussion of the investment risks of Bitcoin, and many people have begun to question whether it really has value as a currency.

But is it really that simple? In this debate about Bitcoin, we cannot ignore the technology and ideas behind it. The core of Bitcoin is decentralization, which means it is not controlled by any government or financial institution. This feature allows Bitcoin to circulate freely around the world, and the transaction process is transparent and cannot be tampered with. This is undoubtedly a huge attraction for investors who want to circumvent the traditional financial system and pursue privacy and self-control.

Many people participate in Bitcoin not only for investment purposes, but also out of faith in this emerging technology. Take a young investor named Li Ming as an example. He came into contact with Bitcoin during college and was deeply attracted by its decentralized concept. In his view, Bitcoin is not only an investment tool, but also a means to fight against the traditional financial system. In the past few years, he has gradually regarded Bitcoin as a long-term investment. Despite frequent market fluctuations, he has always believed in the future of Bitcoin.

Bitcoin market participants can be divided into many types. In addition to long-term investors like Li Ming, there are also many short-term speculators and miners. Short-term speculators usually look for opportunities in market fluctuations and make profits through frequent transactions. Although this strategy can gain profits in the short term, it also comes with huge risks. Many speculators made a lot of money in the bull market, but lost everything in the bear market and eventually had to exit the market.

Miners are an indispensable part of the Bitcoin ecosystem. They use their powerful computing power to solve complex mathematical problems, maintain the security of the network, and receive Bitcoin as a reward. However, as Bitcoin becomes more popular, the difficulty of mining is also increasing. Miners need to invest a lot of money to buy professional mining machines and bear high electricity bills. This puts many small miners under pressure to survive. Only those mining pools with strong resources and technology can stand out from the competition.

In addition to investment and mining, the application scenarios of Bitcoin are also gradually expanding. More and more merchants are beginning to accept Bitcoin as a payment method, which makes Bitcoin gradually move closer to mainstream currencies. For example, well-known companies such as Tesla and Microsoft have announced that they will accept Bitcoin payments. Although these decisions fluctuate in different time periods, they undoubtedly lay the foundation for the application of Bitcoin.

However, the future of Bitcoin is still full of uncertainty. As an emerging asset, its price volatility is extremely high, and investors need to have good risk management capabilities. Many experts suggest that investment in Bitcoin should be based on idle funds and should not be regarded as a substitute for savings. In addition, there are also a large number of scams and fake projects in the market, and investors need to be vigilant to avoid falling into traps.

It is worth noting that the Bitcoin ecosystem is not static. With the advancement of technology and the development of the market, many new cryptocurrencies and blockchain projects continue to emerge. These emerging projects surpass Bitcoin in some aspects, providing faster transaction speeds, lower fees, and stronger privacy protection. When choosing investment targets, investors should keep an open mind, pay attention to market dynamics, and flexibly adjust strategies.

Behind all this, how do the real Bitcoin users view it? On social media and forums, many people share their Bitcoin investment experiences. Some people have become rich overnight because of Bitcoin and enjoyed the pleasure of wealth; while others have suffered heavy losses and pain because of blindly following the trend. These real stories reflect the two sides of the Bitcoin market, which has both opportunities and risks.

In general, the world of Bitcoin is full of hope and challenges. It is not just a digital currency, but also an experiment on the future of finance. For investors, participating in the Bitcoin game requires rationality and caution, and understanding the volatility and potential risks of the market in order to better seize opportunities. At the same time, we should also pay attention to the technology and concepts behind Bitcoin and think about its impact on the traditional financial system.

In this ever-changing era, the story of Bitcoin continues. Each of us is looking for our own answers on this investment path. Whether you are a supporter or an opponent, in the face of this magnificent wave of digital currency, keeping an open mind and rational judgment is the best strategy to cope with future challenges.

The four most famous international exchanges:

Binance INTL	OKX INTL	Gate.io INTL	Huobi INTL
China Line　APP DL	China Line　APP DL	China Line　APP DL	China Line　APP DL

Note: The above exchange logo is the official website registration link, and the text is the APP download link.

Is Bitcoin a big scam? Does anyone play Bitcoin? The price of Bitcoin has been fluctuating, creating a striking and crazy market. Blockchain has been pushed to the forefront, new players are constantly entering the market, various blockchain digital currencies are emerging, and the application of blockchain technology in various fields - even the possibility of application in scientific research is increasingly mentioned. However, for the general audience, both Bitcoin and blockchain are still incomprehensible. If situations such as "buying 10 excavators to mine Bitcoin" and "collecting physical Bitcoin at a high price" are just jokes, then the practice of using blockchain as a tool for pyramid schemes can only make people sigh at the omnipresence of pyramid scheme criminals.
Whether you are eating melons or melon seeds, how do you understand blockchain and blockchain digital currency? This article will be divided into two parts to break down these issues: the first part is the essence of blockchain and Bitcoin; the second part is the problems that blockchain electronic currency will face in subsequent development.
Three keywords tell you what Bitcoin is
We can imagine Bitcoin and the blockchain network as a game, where players are the participants in the game.
Electronic Signature
Each player in the game can have several "wallets", and of course there is money in the wallet. But the wallet is anonymous, and electronic signatures are used to identify and protect players. The role of the electronic signature is to prove that the wallet is yours and you have the right to spend money from the wallet. The electronic signature is divided into two parts, one is the public key and the other is the private key. In the eyes of other players, the public key is your wallet, and the private key is what you use to prove that you are spending money every time you spend money. Keep it well protected from others! For each transaction, the game will use the public key and private key together to calculate to prove that the wallet is yours, to prevent malicious players from pretending to be you to pay or forging that you are receiving money.
BLOCKCHAIN
If electronic currency is just a virtual number, any player can modify it at will, which is definitely not acceptable. Blockchain is a weapon used to prevent money from being created out of thin air, and it can also prevent a sum of money from being spent twice maliciously.
The game strings all transactions together to form a centralized ledger, which contains all accounts starting from the first transaction, that is, a transaction chain, so that the game can know the balance of each wallet, and new transactions must also be included in this ledger. Any attempt to create money out of thin air will be discovered, and any attempt to spend the same money twice will be exposed.
But where does this ledger exist? Because the game does not have a central administrator and is decentralized, in principle every player has a copy of the ledger.
Every transaction must be confirmed by all players, and each player has the responsibility to ensure the security of the system. However, this is difficult to do in practice. Only some players can do this confirmation operation, which creates opportunities for malicious players to tamper with and forge their own copies of the ledger, causing chaos. Therefore, a mechanism should be designed to increase the difficulty of forging ledgers, while also making it easy to identify forged ledgers.
Hash Algorithm
This method of preventing forgery is the hash algorithm.
The hash algorithm can map any raw data, whether it is an image or text, to a specific number, called a hash value. If the data is tampered with, the calculated hash value will change, so the problem of identifying and preventing forgery can be solved.
The MD5 code is a hash value used to verify that the downloaded video has not been tampered with or infected with a virus.
The hash algorithm has an accompanying disadvantage. To generate a hash value that is not so easy to forge, it takes a lot of computer resources, and no one will voluntarily do so. The game uses reward currency to encourage some players to calculate the hash value. They are called miners. Several transactions that are close in time will be combined into a block of the blockchain to calculate the hash value, ensuring that the ledger is difficult to tamper with.
Of course, a malicious miner can still forge a ledger, recalculate the hash values of all accounts, and then have other miners copy his ledger, as long as his computing power exceeds that of more than half of the miners. However, as more and more miners join, this becomes less likely to happen.
WILL BITCOIN BE ATTACKED?
The idea of cracking Bitcoin is to try to find weaknesses in its core functions. For example:
Attack the electronic signature algorithm and steal money from other people's wallets;
Attack the blockchain to increase the cost of other miners, reduce the number of miners, and allow yourself to get more rewards, or try to control the majority of miners so that you can maliciously modify the ledger.
WHAT MAY BE THE METHODS THROUGH WHICH THESE ATTACKS MIGHT BE CARRIED OUT?
1. Quantum Computers
Quantum computers can calculate faster than traditional computers. In 2016, Google and NASA jointly built a quantum computer that is 100 million times faster than ordinary computers. Of course, this technology is still in the experimental stage.
The public key encryption algorithm used in electronic signature technology is relatively easy to be cracked by quantum computers, and malicious players can try to forge wallets to steal other people's money. The maintainers of Bitcoin technology have considered this problem. Although most electronic signature algorithms are likely to fail, there is still one called Lamport.
The signature algorithm is resistant to quantum attacks.
Quantum computers have amazing computing power, but it is still difficult to crack the hash algorithm, so it is still unlikely to forge ledgers with quantum computers. And because the wallet is also encrypted by the hash algorithm, it is not easy for malicious players to steal other people's money. It is estimated that a quantum computer that can break the hash algorithm requires more than 1,500 quantum bits, and current technology can only reach more than 100 quantum bits.
Although quantum computers sound like a formidable adversary, only large companies like IBM and Google have the financial and human resources to develop and use them, and the likelihood of malicious players using quantum computers is low.
Of course, Bitcoin is only the most famous type of blockchain electronic currency. Many electronic currencies that have emerged later have been designed to resist quantum computing, such as IOTA, which was established in 2015. The possibility of quantum computers cracking electronic currencies is not high.
2. Drive away competitors
A malicious miner may also try to monopolize all rewards, try to control the game and rewrite the ledger to create money for himself. To do this, he may need to drive away other miners. How to do this?
He can try to make it so that other miners cannot afford to buy mining hardware. He can try to increase the cost of electricity to increase the expenses of other miners. He can increase the network cost to make his network much faster than others, or maliciously reduce the network speed of others, or make it impossible for others to transmit Bitcoin transaction data on the network. The United States recently abolished "net neutrality", which will cause similar problems.
In general, it is to increase the cost for others. In this way, players with more computing resources, larger network bandwidth, and who can afford the electricity bill can continue to mine and have a better chance of controlling the entire game. However, such an operation requires sufficient financial resources to support it, which is not easy to do.
3. Undermine confidence
In addition to technical means, another approach is to undermine the confidence of consumers who use Bitcoin for actual consumption, mainly by undermining the credit of Bitcoin.
Although the anonymity of games helps prevent the leakage of personal privacy, it can also easily encourage black market transactions. The use of unreasonable technology can also facilitate Ponzi schemes. However, when used in industrial infrastructure such as smart grids and logistics systems, blockchain technology can bring benefits to users, which requires the investment and support of large companies. In other words, good tools should be used in good places.
Meanwhile, the increasing cost of mining has become a climate change issue, with an estimated 0.19% of global electricity consumption in 2017 and expected to exceed the annual electricity consumption of the United States in 2019. One Bitcoin transaction consumes enough electricity to power eight average American households for a day. However, at this point, the expectation is that the benefits of Bitcoin mining will slowly become zero, fewer users will participate in mining, and hardware will be designed to be more power-efficient, both of which will reduce energy consumption.
Ordinary currencies use trust as their foundation, and only when the price of the currency is stable can it be used for transactions. The same is true for Bitcoin. Only when the currency value is stable and the technology has no loopholes can it gain everyone's trust and be used to purchase goods and services. At present, these have not been fully achieved, but some designers are already taking action to design new cryptocurrencies with stable prices and fewer loopholes to replace Bitcoin, which may have become outdated.
Perhaps cryptocurrencies will have their own weaknesses anyway, just as current currencies have their own shortcomings. But designers and developers are still working hard to correct them, hoping that it will get better in the future.
Why are so many people speculating in Bitcoin? We know that legal tender, as a symbol of wealth, has circulation scenarios, payment scenarios and value scenarios. China's earliest currency was shells. We now think that thing is very naive, there are so many of them, what is the use, but people at that time recognized shells. Everyone recognized it and avoided the embarrassment of bartering!
People in the Spring and Autumn Period used copper as currency, which is actually the same thing from today's perspective, but people at that time recognized it.
During the Warring States Period, people discovered gold, and then it was passed down to the present day. After Qin Shihuang unified the six kingdoms, he issued two currencies, gold and copper coins. After that, the dynasties made improvements, but basically nothing changed. It was not until the Ming Dynasty that silver was added.
Now with the People's Bank of China, gold and silver are basically no longer used as currency, but they can also be used as a symbol of wealth. From the perspective of the length of history, the reason why a currency is used as currency is not important, but what is important is people's recognition of it, and whether it will not be over-forged.
Bitcoin is now increasingly recognized by some foreign institutions and can be used as a payment currency, which means that this is a trend, but Bitcoin also has great disadvantages. First, the unit price is very high and it cannot be as liquid as legal currency. Second, for the country, it may be subject to tax evasion and money laundering. The third is that it is easy to be manipulated by the banker, which may be a disaster for ordinary people!
So in summary, even if Bitcoin is recognized as a payment currency in the future, it is likely to be used for bulk commodity transactions. For example, if you go to the supermarket to buy a bottle of mineral water, it will basically be unusable!
Currently, Bitcoin is in the transition between bear and bull markets. This is a natural market wash and also a way to remove some of the market bubbles. There must be a perfect mechanism. If the bubbles are not removed, the consequences will be serious, and if the bubbles are completely removed, the Bitcoin market will no longer exist. In general, those who still insist that Bitcoin is a scam can stay away from Bitcoin, pay attention to it but don't understand it and let it fend for itself. Those who think Bitcoin is worth investing in can invest moderately with their spare money. This is a matter of opinion, and there is no single answer so far.

The controversy surrounding Bitcoin is not limited to investors. The regulatory policies of many countries and regions on Bitcoin are also constantly changing. On the one hand, some countries, such as El Salvador, have legalized Bitcoin in an attempt to use it to promote economic development; on the other hand, many countries are cautious about Bitcoin, believing that it may lead to financial risks and money laundering. This policy uncertainty undoubtedly increases the complexity of the Bitcoin market.