The future of digital currencies 

Although Bitcoin has since been a bit overshadowed by easier to use rivals with Bitcoin having lost market share to newcomers like Ethereum and Ripple, Bitcoin is the future of digital currencies.  

As it has been a pioneer in the field of virtual currencies with Bitcoin being the biggest cryptocurrency in the world and the most widely-adopted by exchanges. 

In 2017 the cryptocurrency Bitcoin had been making news for its seemingly unstoppable rise in the stock market. And it also seems to not be slowing down any time soon, with analysts predicting the stock price to still rise high. 

And some investors, like Social Capital’s Chamath Palihapitiya, thinking the price will reach $100 000 per coin in the next three to four years and can go up to a million dollars per coin in the next 20 years, is what he told “CNBC”. 

Therefore what’s this future of digital currencies? Bitcoin? It’s a form of digital currency, created and held electronically. No one controls it. Bitcoins aren’t printed, like rands, dollars or euros they’re produced by people. 

Bitcoin was created to work as peer-to-peer electronic cash. It’s not actual, physical money. Bitcoin transactions are public digital messages, signed by using cryptography, that are sent to the whole Bitcoin Network to be verified. The transactions are kept in a digital ledger called the blockchain. 

As explained in a paper by Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious supposed creator of bitcoin. An owner can transfer a bitcoin to another by “digitally signing a hash of the previous transaction and the public key of the next owner and adding these to the end of the coin.” To verify the transaction, a payee can verify the signatures to see the chain of ownership.