Last Updated on Dec 18, 2019 by James W
You are interested in investing in cryptocurrencies for their retirement. So much so, in fact, that it is now possible to find the best bitcoin IRA – coin IRA to do this with. However, in order to be successful with an individual retirement account that allows the addition of cryptocurrencies, it is very important that you first understand what bitcoin is. You should never invest in anything that you don’t fully understand.
Understanding Bitcoin for the Best Bitcoin IRA – Coin IRA
Bitcoin is a type of cryptocurrency that exist on an online public ledger known as the blockchain. This blockchain secure transactions using cryptography. That is where the currency gets the name cryptocurrency from. The blockchain ledger is not updated by a central authority such as a government or a bank. Instead, the core software of Bitcoin is run on a peer to peer network and members of this network managed the blockchain through consensus.
Finding this consensus in terms of what the state of the public ledger is is done through mining. There are computers all over the world and, every 10 minutes, they fight between each other to resolve an ethical problem provided by the Bitcoin protocol. Whichever computer wins will then be allowed to provide updates to the ledger for 10 minutes. Additionally, that computer will retain the 12.5 bitcoins that are released in that time.
Bitcoin was originally developed by Satoshi Nakamoto, which is a pseudonym and many people believe that Nakamoto was not a single individual rather a group of people. Regardless there off comma the Bitcoin software first went live in January 2009. This was three months after an official white paper publication in a mailing list of cypherpunk in which a full description of the technology was included.
The Bitcoin protocol is not owned by any institution, company, or individual. Rather, it is 100% open source. This means that any software developer anywhere in the world can take part in improving the system. In order for bitcoin to operate properly, it has had to develop a type of ecosystem. In this are included investment platforms, exchanges, wallet services, and mining operations period to date, over $2 billion has been invested in start of businesses that offer services related to bitcoin and it’s market capitalization currently stands at around a $38 billion.
Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency of it’s kind but it certainly wasn’t the last nor was it ever intended to be the only one. Since 2009, over 1,000 different cryptocurrencies have been developed, each of which may use the same technology and concepts but focus on different usages and features. These coins are known as altcoins, and the most popular are Ethereum Classic, NEM, Ripple, Litecoin, and Ethereum. Indeed, many of these can also be added to a bitcoin IRA.
Bitcoin continues to hold the biggest market share of cryptocurrencies, however. In fact, there are some 150,000 merchants around the world that accept the currency as a form of payment.
