Incident for Bitcoin, the virtual currency whose value has soared in recent months. The currency is volatile and is always poised between the push for legitimacy and the skepticism of many institutions, which see the risk of favoring the illegal economy. In this roller coaster, today belongs to the second category, the one that makes the currency depress.
Bitcoin is experiencing a moment of weakness. China is countering it, in the wake of the positions of the European Banking Authority. On BTC China, the main trading platform in the People's Republic, the price fell as low as 2551 yuan ($417), down 65% from the record level reached in late November, when its value surpassed that of gold .
Beijing is the first trading place for virtual currency. But the Central Bank of China, on December 5, had banned its country's banking institutions from using it. Result? In one hour, the equivalent of 5 billion dollars was burned worldwide. Bitcoin tried to recover, but another blow came during the week: according to local media, Beijing is ready to take new restrictive measures.
According to what was reported by the financial newspaper Diyi Caijing Ribao, the Chinese authorities would have banned transactions in virtual currency also on online payment platforms, including the popular Alipay, a service provided by the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. The newspaper, which quotes an anonymous source, writes that the decision would come after a closed-door meeting of the Central Bank. The indiscretion increased nervousness and further weakened Bitcoin.
The currency was created in 2009, in the midst of the financial crisis, by a mysterious computer scientist (one of his pseudonyms is Satoshi Nakamoto). The goal was to give birth to a currency that did not depend on a central bank or any financial institution.
Bitcoin was born from complex computer codes, stored in electronic wallets and traded through online platforms. The value is yes determined by how many people want to trade, but there is more. To make a transaction in Bitcoin, you need to start a process called mining. In other words, you need to make the computing capacity of your computer available. The more problems and calculations the PC solves (therefore the more powerful it is and the more calculation capacity it offers), the greater the amount of Bitcoins you get. The problem, if anything, is understanding to whom the computing capacity is offered.
To receive a Bitcoin, the user must have a proper address – nothing personal, a string of numbers and letters. And since there is no record of these addresses, people can remain anonymous during a transaction.
Bitcoins already boast multiple attempts at imitation. Now there are also OkCoin, Litecoin, Namecoin, Peercoin, Infinitecoin and Quarkcoin. Meanwhile, the bubble hit its all-time high when one Bitcoin went up to $XNUMX a month ago. But the explosion is always around the corner. And, right now, the awl seems to be in the hands of China.
