10 years of bitcoin

Over the years, Bitcoin has become the obligatory reference for the adoption of the blockchain technology and for a good reason too.

Bitcoin

The ‘bitcoin‘ has certainly become the most important cryptocurrency in the world and, for many, responsible for a digital and financial revolution. When it first arrived, it caused an unprecedented disruption in the financial world. It promised to be an asset that has no physical form but only exists in the digital realm, which guarantees greater security and allows transactions to be carried out person to person without intermediaries.

The coin has become an overvalued and one of the most important assets in the world and, for many, responsible for a digital and financial revolution that on Wednesday, October 31, was a decade old.

“Since the existence of banks, we had not had the opportunity to create money based on an agreement with a code,” says Mauricio Tovar, an expert on blockchain and co-director of the research group InTIColombia of the National University.

Bitcoin (BTC) Price Today – BTC / USD

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The Highs and Lows

In 10 years, bitcoin has taken center stage and has experienced ups and downs. In a speculative environment in which high economic spheres still doubt its effectiveness, governments face the dilemma of regulating it and accepting it as a method of payment. The last two years marked an important boom, but also sharpened the challenges: it occupied headlines in the media, mainly because of the volatility of its price, while increasing the curiosity of millions in the world who began to invest in it. The 2017 was a roller coaster: it went from costing 1,000 dollars in January to crossing the 20,000 dollars in December, to then fall and settle in the nearly 6,000 in which it was quoted this week.

Blockchain

One of the aspects highlighted by the experts is that bitcoin gave visibility to the blockchain, the blockchain technology on which the currency is based and which has led to the creation of all kinds of projects, not just other foreign exchange.

The ‘blockchain’ is an open and decentralized record book in which information is stored in encrypted and interlaced blocks to protect transactions. When registering a transaction, it must be replicated in all the blocks. Each member of the system can see it, but the anonymity of the users is guaranteed. Today the system can be used to record medical records, contracts or even the data of some votes. “When registering a contract in ‘blockchain,’ the characteristic is that when you upload a transaction, it is linked to all transaction histories.

If you want to modify a record, you have to modify all of the above, because the technology is distributed in many machines, “explains Camilo Gutiérrez, head of the Research Laboratory of the cybersecurity company Eset. Jorge Bejarano, an OAS consultant on Digital Security and director of Tech & Law Lawyers, points out that the system behind the bitcoin “is an example of how a technology ends up giving a message to the world that the model must be changed .”