To be sure, only a minority of bitcoin miners and bitcoin exchanges have said they will support the new currency. Unlike stock, Bitcoin does not represent ownership in a company or entity. Owning Bitcoin is like owning digital currency, much like owning $1 is like owning paper currency. For example, if you purchased 100 coins at $65.52 on July 5, 2013, and held it until its all-time high of $68,521 on March 13, 2021, you would have $6,168,386. Bitcoin was released in the aftermath of a financial crisis precipitated by the loosening of regulations in the derivatives market. The cryptocurrency itself remains mostly unregulated and has garnered a reputation for its border- and regulation-free ecosystem. On the one hand, the absence of regulation means that it can be used freely across borders and that it is not subject to the same government-imposed controls as other currencies. An indirect cost of bitcoin mining is the difficulty level of its algorithm.
\nThe vast majority of institutional investors are still wary of putting their money into the asset class, resulting in less liquidity and more volatility for its ecosystem. Arriving at a solution to the problem requires brute force in the form of considerable processing power. In monetary terms, this means that the miner will have to spend money on racking mining machines equipped with expensive processors. The bitcoin mining process also incurs costly electricity bills that, according to some estimates, account for between 90 to 95 percent of overall costs. While Bitcoin is yet to find favor as a medium of exchange, it has attracted the attention of retail investors. The locus of Bitcoin’s demand shifts based on economic and geopolitical considerations. For example, China’s citizens may have reportedly used the cryptocurrency to circumvent capital controls in 2020. Bitcoin’s price is primarily affected by its supply, the market’s demand for it, availability, and competing cryptocurrencies.<\/p>\n