Graphic litecoin value
Bitcoin is a digital currency based on an open-source peer-to-peer software protocol that is independent of any central authority. Bitcoin issuance and transactions are carried out collectively by the Bitcoin network. Bitcoin relies on cryptography to secure and validate transactions, and is thus often referred to as a "cryptocurrency".
Bitcoins can be "mined" by users, and also transferred from user to user, directly via computer or smartphone without the need for any intermediary financial institution.
Bitcoin transactions are pseudonymous and decentralized. Proponents of Bitcoin argue that it is not susceptible to devaluation by inflation or seigniorage in the way other modern "fiat" currencies are. Nor is it associated with an arbitrary store of value such as gold, unlike hard-money or representative currencies. The Bitcoin protocol was first described by Satoshi Nakamoto a pseudonym in Each bitcoin is divided into million smaller units called satoshis. MtGox was the largest Bitcoin exchange in the world, until February when the site shut down and trading was suspended.
It was subsequently announced on Bitcoin news that over , Bitcoins had been stolen from customers of this exchange. Quandl provides historical data for MtGox. Note that this data stopped updating on 25 Feb Quandl has daily prices for over crypto-currencies from Cryptocoin Charts. You can view all Quandl's cryptocurrency time series on our Cryptocoin Charts source page.
Dogecoin data, from Dogecoin Average, is available from our Dogecoin Average source. If you have any questions about this data, or would like to add more datasets to Quandl, please email us. The goal was to create cryptocurrencies as valuable, or at least as lucrative, in the short-run, as Bitcoin. If the forkable, derivative-by-design nature of cryptocurrencies explains the breadth of the ecosystem, what explains the growth in value?
Part of it is surely market speculation, and another part of it is that cryptocurrencies and other blockchain-based assets do have real-world applications today. But another part comes from cryptocurrency entrepreneurs wising up to the fact that their little upstart protocols, in order to be valuable, needed to have an ecosystem built around them. That, of course, takes time and money. There are two ways of approaching this. Once their new cryptocurrency hit an exchange, and thus had a price, this private stash of coins would then have value, enough to sell for Bitcoin or fiat, which could then sustain a project until the ecosystem of wallets and services around their cryptocurrency became self-sustaining and community-driven.
Today, though, the fundraising mechanism of choice appears to be the initial coin offering. As Alex Wilhelm explained in an article for TechCrunch:. Although the mechanics of ICOs have been in practice for several years, the name and label for initial coin offering events has only gained some currency recently.
And the ICO market has really hit a hockey-stick growth trajectory. Back then, early speculators in Bitcoin, flush with newfound crypto-fortune, plunged their money back into emerging cryptocurrencies. This was done partially for fun see Dogecoin and other novelties but also to chase the same kind of returns they enjoyed from Bitcoin investments. For now, that bull run has continued unabated. What explains the price increase? Bitcoin is a relatively bare-bones blockchain system that requires layers of protocols to be built on top of it to make it a usable platform for utilities like smart contracts.
Platforms like Counterparty and Omni are both built on the Bitcoin blockchain and have sprouted their own collection of digital assets and services that ride on top of them. Ethereum, on the other hand, was launched with its own scripting language baked in, making it possible to build complex smart contracts, decentralized autonomous organizations DAOs , decentralized autonomous apps DApps and even other cryptocurrencies with relative ease.
This ease of development, combined with the rising price of Ether and a desire by early stakeholders to re-invest in the Ethereum ecosystem, has made Ethereum the platform of choice for crypto-asset entrepreneurs — at least for now.