This article is an eye-opener for those, who consider Bitcoin as an investment opportunity more than a Technological Innovation.  Bitcoin is widely popular these days, and marching very fast towards 1000$ and I hope it will touch 1000$/Bitcoin Value by the end of this year. Lets learn about bitcoins before we invest our hard money into it.

What is Bitcoin/Blockchain?

Well, in 2008, the financial industry crashed and, perhaps propitiously, an anonymous person or persons named Satoshi Nakamoto created a paper where he developed a protocol for a digital cash that used an underlying cryptocurrency called Bitcoin. And this cryptocurrency enabled people to establish trust and do transactions
without a third party. And this seemingly simple act set off a spark that ignited the world, that has everyone excited or terrified or otherwise interested in many places.

Now, don’t be confused about Bitcoin –Bitcoin is an asset; it goes up and down, and that should be of interest to you if you’re a speculator. More broadly, it’s a cryptocurrency. It’s not a fiat currency controlled by a nation-state.
And that’s of greater interest. But the real pony here is the underlying technology.

It’s called blockchain.

So for the first time now in human history, people everywhere can trust each other and transact peer to peer.
And trust is established, not by some big institution, but by collaboration, by cryptography
and by some clever code. Because trust is native to the technology, I call this, “The Trust Protocol.”

Now, you’re probably wondering: How does this thing work?

Assets — digital assets like money to music and everything in between –are not stored in a central place, but they’re distributed across a global ledger, using the highest level of cryptography. And when a transaction is conducted,
it’s posted globally, across millions and millions of computers is a group of people called “miners.” These are not young people, they’re Bitcoin miners.

They have massive computing power at their fingertips –10 to 100 times bigger than all of Google worldwide.
These miners do a lot of work. And every 10 minutes, kind of like the heartbeat of a network, a block gets created
that has all the transactions from the previous 10 minutes. Then the miners get to work, trying to solve some tough problems. And they compete: the first miner to find out the truth and to validate the block, is rewarded in digital currency, in the case of the Bitcoin blockchain, with Bitcoin.Then — this is the key part —that block is linked to the previous block and the previous block to create a chain of blocks. And every one is time-stamped,
kind of like with a digital waxed seal. So if I wanted to go and hack a block and, say, pay you and you with the same money, I’d have to hack that block, plus all the preceding blocks, the entire history of commerce on that blockchain,
not just on one computer but across millions of computers, simultaneously, all using the highest levels of encryption,
in the light of the most powerful computing resource in the world that’s watching me.

Tough to do.

This is infinitely more secure than the computer systems that we have today. Blockchain. That’s how it works.

How to invest in Bitcoins

You need a Bitcoin wallet, the private key and Bitcoin Address to send money in bitcoin network. And you can create your wallet and get your address and key from Bitcoin Wallet Providers Like Zebpay(For India) and Coinbase(Global). You can deposit money to these wallets by links your cards or bank account, You can also trade your bitcoin for money when you see its rising on these platforms. My advice for you, Start with small investment, Earn some profits then go with a large amount.

Check out these articles for more insights on Bitcoin trading:

http://itsblockchain.com/2016/11/20/smart-bitcoin-trading-india/

http://itsblockchain.com/2016/11/26/bitcoins-price/