Earn bitcoins
Bitcoin: new global currency or pyramid scheme?
There are increasing reports around the world that a company is starting to work with bitcoins, a cyber-currency that comes out of nowhere: not guaranteed by the state, not issued and not controlled by any central bank. In early December, a Lamborghini car was purchased for the first time in the US with bitcoins, and a university in Cyprus said it would continue to accept tuition fees in bitcoins, despite the fact that the Central Bank of Cyprus is vehemently opposed to this "currency".
Now the bitcoin exchange rate, following a ban on cryptocurrency payments in China and warnings from the European Banking Authority, is markedly lower than its November highs, when the value of the virtual currency rose from $100 per bitcoin to $1,241.1 in two months. Experts believe virtual currencies have their merits, but the Bitcoin scheme is very much like a pyramid scheme and is not exactly to the liking of authorities and supervisory authorities due to the anonymity of payments.
Bitcoin - money from the net
Bitcoin, created in the beginning of 2009, is a new type of digital currency based on a special algorithm. Initially, a bitcoin was worth only 5 cents. The currency is not a debenture and is not backed by any real value. In its origins, bitcoin resembles the virtual currency in cyberpunk books - it is not tied to any state and has no author. Bitcoin does, however, allow for anonymous payments. You can get bitcoins by selling something for them or by lending your computer's processing power to the network that makes the system work. The process of technical formation of the cryptocurrency, according to Irina Prosvirina, head of the Department of Business and Competitiveness Evaluation at South Ural State University, is very similar to a game. "A virtual coin is created by forming long chains of records that meet certain rules - it resembles a card game, where you need a random coincidence of set rules," Irina Prosvirina explains, adding that to participate in the "issue" (to become a "miner"), you must have a computer with a special program. According to the expert, this was the main hitch, because the speed of coin creation depends on the capacity of computers and it is necessary to "outplay" the capacity already involved.
The basic principle of bitcoin is a distributed computer network, explains Ilya Roschupkin, director of BCS Premier in Chelyabinsk. "Transaction information is transmitted immediately to all connected computers in encrypted form," says Ilya Roschupkin. This, he says, guarantees reliability and increases the speed of payment processing and verification to a few minutes or hours. At the same time, any computer in the network is not only able to make payments for other people's transactions, but also to generate new bitcoins, as if receiving a fee from the network for its work. "This is quite a slow process, so the coins are additionally bought on electronic marketplaces for regular currency," explains Ilya Roschupkin.
International anti-virus company ESET reported the discovery of a new modification of the banking Trojan Hesperbot, which has bitcoin theft capabilities. The Trojan is most widespread in Turkey (52%) and the Czech Republic (31%). In Russia, 1% of users were attacked by attackers.
Bitcoins come out of nowhere: as soon as a special program forms the right chain - that's it, the "coin" is ready. "But since it is not interesting to get money for nothing, the creators of the program came up with a number of restrictions, and to satisfy them, it now takes too many computers, servers, electricity and other quite 'non-virtual' resources to go through and check for compliance with the rules of the game numerous chains of transactions", explains Irina Prosvirina, adding that it is a conventional analogue of that commodity mass (and until the mid-70s - gold), which is a limiter of money supply in any economy. Thus, one of the principles of a real monetary system is satisfied: bitcoins cannot be so numerous that they will quickly lose value (the maximum number of coins in BitCoin is limited to a ceiling of 21 million pieces - and about half of that amount has been "put into circulation" so far). The ceiling will be reached by 2140.
"Bitcoins could therefore well occupy the niche of unsecured anonymous payments. Rather, they already have. Of course, it makes it easier for criminals to operate and makes it harder to fight money laundering. But no one can stop this system," explains Irina Prosvirina, adding that it will only stop if it stops issuing coins, which is practically impossible: for this, new miners must stop joining the system and old miners must stop initiating new transactions.
Is it possible to make money on bitcoins?
The main advantage of bitcoin is that any PC user can generate a "coin". With this cryptocurrency, there is no single issuing centre.