To understand what a bitcoin is, it is necessary to know how a traditional currency works, whether pesos, dollars, euros, etc. Initially the coins were valuable minerals such as gold or silver, and only large merchants or aristocrats had access to these coins, because it was very insecure due to theft or loss, the banks created the first bills or checks, they kept the gold in their vaults and in exchange you received a piece of paper that guaranteed the wealth you had. Eventually this changed and little by little the value was lost, currently the value of money is practically imaginary or virtual and the banknotes are issued by banks and they are the ones who decide what value it has, they are no longer based on minerals, but on many factors. like how safe or stable a country is. But we are not going to delve into financial concepts; Money as we traditionally see it is in coins or bills, now we see it as a digital representation, which can be a simple text message sent over the Internet.

Bitcoin is the first currency that does not depend on any government or banks, as it is digital it can be sent over the internet, therefore transfer fees are minimal, The management of transactions and the issuance of bitcoins is carried out collectively by its users, so there are no intermediaries when you want to buy or pay with this currency, each transfer is made directly from person to person through the network. .

A bitcoin is the result of a mathematical operation, which generates an alphanumeric sequence 33 characters long, making it unique and indecipherable, this string is the currency, which has a public key, this is used to make transfers. When you obtain or transfer a bitcoin it becomes unique again. Best of all, the software to create each bitcoin is open source, so anyone can review it, it has no owner as such and no one controls it.


The interesting thing about how these bitcoins are created is that the mathematical operation is so complex that a lot of hardware is required to process it, because each new bitcoin is It takes longer to create than the previous one; That is, if we have a computer and it takes 15 minutes to create the first coin, for the next it can be 1 hour, and so on, until the computer can no longer resist any more processes and literally explodes. That is why to create more coins, apart from the software, a huge infrastructure is necessary and as a reward for supporting these processes you receive bitcoin exchanges, this process is known as mining, you would literally be mining bitcoins, of course these processes of mining are connected by an entire collective network. But if we are not interested in mining for all the aspects involved, the easiest way to participate is to invest in bitcoins, as if investing in dollars; Due to the mathematical formula, there is a limit to the number of bitcoins that can be created, which is why as more are created, the value of the currency increases.

 

Is it worth investing in Bitcoins or not? There is only one way to know, if you are interested in investing or learning more about this currency, you can find more information at bitcoin.org. The recommendation is that you first inform yourself very well before investing, and that you become familiar with this currency so that you can use it safely.