Introduction

Bitcoin is… a form of digital currency that no one has any control over. As a digital currency, it is not printed like yen, euros or dollars. A central bank doesn’t print bitcoin. Bitcoins are produced and created by people to be used in all kinds of transactions. This form of currency is mostly made by a technological implementation that solves complex mathematical problems. Having said that, let’s talk about its advantages and disadvantages so that people can learn more about bitcoin.

Advantages

1. It is possible to send and get money at any given time. The time and distance factors will not restrict the user when he uses this currency.

2. Person with bitcoin will be in control of the money while using this currency as it is not hampered by the holidays and other obstacles while doing transactions with it.

3. Merchants become incapable of charging extra fees on anything without you knowing about it. As a result, there is no such thing as hidden fees and merchants would be forced to talk to the customers before levying any charges on the transactions.

4. Transactions are encrypted. ‘Nuff said about that.

5. The users can complete the transactions without revealing any personal information.

6. Since the transactions using Bitcoin happen online, all of them are well documented. So, anybody can see the block of transactions. However, the personal information would still be unavailable to others. Hence, it would be a transparent transaction.

7. The Bitcoin-based transactions are either not chargeable or attract very low fees. Even if charged, that transaction gets priority in the network and gets executed very fast.

8. Since there is no tying up of personal information with transactions, merchants get protection from potential losses even if a fraud occurs.

Disadvantages

1. This currency network is not known to people. Hence, they need to know about this digital currency.

2. To spread the word Bitcoin, the networking is necessary. At present, only few businesses can use this digital currency.

3. Currently, the transactions based on this currency are highly volatile as only limited number of coins is available.

4. Due to the huge demand for this digital currency, its value keeps on changing daily. It would settle only when the demand stabilizes in the market.

5. Since this digital currency system is in infancy state, not many software are available in the market to make it a secure transaction.

6. Vulnerable to governments’ attack on the cryptocurrency.