Bitcoin in 2017
2017, quite remarkably, is being dubbed as the Year of Bitcoin. It hit the $1000 in the beginning of the year and accelerated right upto the $19,000 mark by mid-December, registering an almost 1800% increase in its price. Such a remarkable hit made it to the news headlines almost daily, and coaxed millions of people to look up Bitcoin and consider it as a potential investment for themselves. People have since wanted to know more and more about this digital currency, which resulted in Bitcoin securing the second position in the Google Trends list of the top trending topics for 2017.
Should you invest in Bitcoin in 2018?
More than ever in the history of investments, first time investors are looking at Bitcoins as a source of herculean returns. However, the limited number of Bitcoins available, and its constantly rising prices has brought up the question of whether Bitcoin is still a sound investment for the year of 2018. Before looking at the pros and cons of any form of investment it is vital to understand that the inherent property of any investment is instability – if not all then at least the most bankable ones do. And since Bitcoin is majorly a decentralized platform, it deters traditional investors from being highly excited about investing in it. They regard it as something with mercurial value, deficient of a formal structure, doomed to eventually fall out of the financial world in the coming years.
However, this is also one aspect that intrigues them. Bitcoin is unregulated and is not backed by any financial unit or singular government. Bitcoin users find this a very remarkable feature of this form of virtual currency since they are not levied any high transaction fees, additional fees, conversion rates etc. Not only this, the Blockchain technology on which Bitcoin is developed upon, provides for a public log of all the transactions ever processed, accessible to every user of the Bitcoin community. This open source nature of the Bitcoin platform provides unprecedented clarity in its functioning. The security and speediness of Bitcoin transactions has made it a growing popularity in several big countries.
Investing in Bitcoins in simple terms means buying them and then waiting for its value to appreciate with time in the hope of reaping massive returns. Thus said, people have been investing in it for majorly two purposes – first, to represent it as the future of money and thus do their part in supporting a the idea of a decentralized platform for financial savings and transactions and secondly, to make money.
HODL your Bitcoin
One would hold Bitcoins in their digital wallets in the only hope that one day in the subsequent years they could actually make real world purchases with it. That being said and considering the volatile nature of the Bitcoin’s value presently, one needs to question themselves the nature of their investment. Someone looking to reap benefits in the short term has loads of money making opportunities to explore by understanding the rapidly fluctuating value of Bitcoins, however anyone looking to use Bitcoins as a legal future of payment in the real world needs to decide whether or not the rapid volatile fluctuations would eventually subside and a more stable value of its price be determined.
Owing to the risky nature of a Bitcoin investment, it’s important for any investor to realize that investing more than they are willing to or able to lose would only push them towards depths of high risk situations. It is very important to do your own research about these investments and not blindly take the word of anyone. Understand the technicalities behind the process of not just buying Bitcoins but also those of Bitcoin mining. That being said, anyone looking into Bitcoin mining should understand how expensive the process is and that it is profitable only if done on a large scale. Bitcoin mining calls for a huge investment in the mining hardware in the very first place and requires you to have access to a lot of electricity. There are several cloud mining sites promising to do the work for you but more often than usual these are scams and it is much more wise and cost effective to buy your Bitcoins instead of spending them on mining hardware and/or paying cloud mining sites to do the job for you.
Yes or No?
If the answer to whether or not one should invest in Bitcoins was as simple and binary as a quick yes or no, everyone would be buying it or vice versa. This is in fact a complete process of doing your research, understanding the technology, educating yourself about it, and if one decides to finally make an investment, should always stay up to date with the current trends. Bitcoin is still a relatively new invention in the financial world, however a huge set of points do indicate in the direction of a new era. Like any other traditional investment, one should be in a position to lose everything, however, higher risks are always a steady companion of humongous returns.
