Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency that is rising in popularity and value every day. Cryptocurrency is a type of electronic currency that is virtually untraceable. Bitcoin has been used by many people as a way to get rich quick technique because in the past 5 years, it has increased in value more than twenty times the original value. The cryptocurrency is making people rich but is also having a negative effect on the global economy. Bitcoin is a great way to make a great deal of money but is primarily used for evil purposes and should not be used instead of traditional currencies. 

Bitcoin was introduced into the global economy on January 3, 2009, originally created by an unknown person or group going by the name Satoshi Nakamoto. “Bitcoin is a purely online virtual currency, unbacked by either physical commodities or sovereign obligation; instead, it relies on a combination of cryptographic protection and a peer-to-peer protocol for witnessing settlements”(Meiklejohn). There is no single owner to the bitcoin network because the thousands of computers that run the block chain are dispersed all over the world. It was introduced as a cryptocurrency that will allow people to send money across the world without a middleman with the least cost. Transactions between users were verified by network nodes and all transactions are recorded on a ledger that everyone can see call the block chain. Bitcoin is called a cryptocurrency because it is only a digital currency and uses cryptography to fight against counterfeiting (Juels). Bitcoin security works like a team type deal, where the block chain runs on every single computer and when someone attempts fraud or tries to steal, a computer will prevent them from doing so. The block chain is quite unique in the fact that it achieves both transparency and confidentiality amongst its users (Juels). Many people have heard of bitcoin but never understood how one gets a hold of a bitcoin, but in reality it is quite simple. There are two ways a user can get a bitcoin; one way is to simply buy a bitcoin from another user, and the other way is the mine for bitcoin. Mining is a complicated process requiring an extremely powerful computer and a lot of power and time. Mining is a service where you devote your computer’s processing speed to keeping the block chain the same. Each block contains a hash or algorithm that needs to be solved, and can only be solved with powerful computers. Each time a block is solved, the users who helped are rewarded with some brand new bitcoin. And each time a block is created; new bitcoin is created and introduced into the economy. It has the same effect on the economy as a mint printing fresh dollar bills. But here is the catch, every 2016 blocks solved, the difficulty of the algorithm is altered to keep the block solving time the same. “It must be remembered is that Bitcoin process is based on a decentralized system, which does not depend on the central bank, system scheduled to offer a limited number of coins in some time”(Metz). An example is if the users are solving the blocks too fast, the network will change the block’s difficulty causing them to take a lot longer to solve and bringing back the average solve time. (Negurita 4). Everyday more and more services are starting to take bitcoin and other cryptocurrency as currency. A great example of this is Microsoft and subways are huge companies that take bitcoin at their locations.

There are many types of investors in the world of bitcoins. Most small time investors will make all their profits on resell value. By that it means that these investors will buy a couple bitcoin, wait for the value to go up and then sell the bitcoin when they are pleased with the value increase. Currently bitcoin is a great investment because bitcoin has never gone down in value and is only going up. In November 2017 the current value of a single bitcoin is 7355 US dollars, which is three hundred and sixty seven times more valuable than it was on release. Many computer scientists are skeptical of the extreme rate of value increase and believe it may go down drastically due to the fact that more and more people every day are starting to mine the block chain. Another type of investor is the miner, and the miner will mine bitcoin and sell them when they solve the block chain. It’s a lot more simple than people think, all a user has to do is download bitcoin mining software onto their computer and let it run for extended periods of time, but the time it takes to mine may vary depending on how strong the computer is. Many people across the nation have small computers set up to mine bitcoin on the side, but there are a select few in the world that have gone beyond what anyone has seen before. There are several millionaires out there that have set up entire warehouses of computer dedicated to mining bitcoin. In these complexes, there are hundreds and hundreds of computers mining all day and all night. The small scale miner will take a couple weeks to solve one block, while these mining warehouses will solve 10+ blocks per day. This is just the tip of the iceberg, only the economic side of bitcoin is shown on mass media. Whilst it’s actual purpose is yet to be known by most (Meiklejohn). 

While many people believe that bitcoin was invented for the sole purpose of transferring money more easily, others believe that it was created so that money could be transferred anonymously. There is the internet that everyone uses everyday such as social media, google, etc. this is only 10% of the internet. The other 90% of the internet is in what we call the deep web. The deep web is a special part of the internet that is only accessible through special browsers such as tor. The deep web houses the Silk Road, which is the online black market. The Silk Road, when it was still around, offered everything from weapons to drugs. The Silk Road is no longer available due to the fact that the creator was arrested by the FBI and his 30,000 bitcoin were seized. “Criminal organizations like the Silk Road, an online market for illicit goods that had been busted by authorities in the U.S., benefit from the relative anonymity of Bitcoin addresses” (Zohar 111). Even though The Silk Road was shut down, successor sites such as Silk Road 2.0 and Agora were created by the administrators of the original Silk Road. No matter how hard the government tries, there will always be a new Black Market to replace the last. The only way to stop these criminal activities for good is to completely abolish bitcoin. If bitcoin was no longer a thing, the criminals would have no way of purchasing such illegal items online. Abolishing bitcoin would be extremely difficult but perhaps changing the properties of the cryptocurrency in a way where it prevents people to using them to buy illegal things. Such as making bitcoin not anonymous, where the government could see what is being purchased and who is involved in the transaction. It is theorized that Silk Road 2.0 and Agora have 2 million more items for sale than the original Silk Road. But while the Silk Road was in its prime, it is estimated that it had $1.2 million in transactions monthly. Criminals will get drugs or weapons any way possible. “Bitcoin has been used as a key component of the illegal mail order drug and firearm markets, and has been stolen in large quantities by hackers” (Tsukerman 21). Another reason in which bitcoin is not as secure as advertised is that it can be stolen by hackers. It had a large amount of concurrent users because purchasing illegal things was never easier with bitcoin. Since bitcoin transfer is completely anonymous, criminals and terrorists could by weapons and drugs online like its Amazon. If a criminal wanted to, they could go onto whatever the current black market site is and order a fully automatic firearm for less than 1 bitcoin and have it delivered to their front door. That means a firearm that the world does not know exists because it probably has no documentation or serial number. “Bitcoin’s lack of government regulation made it attractive to black markets and malware writers”(Juels). If the bitcoin investing is in the 10% of the internet and the black market is the vast majority of the internet, we can come to a conclusion that bitcoin is predominately used for nefarious purposes.

Another evil thing that has arisen from bitcoin is hackers and computers. As stated above, there are thousands of people mining for bitcoin all over the world. Since bitcoin has grown in such exponential growth over the past 7 years, it has created a great deal of greed for money. Everyone wants money and bitcoin is worth a lot of money, hackers are taking advantage of this. Hackers all over have created malware that makes people mine bitcoin for them. The malware writers have a program that is hidden in a link or an email that when it is opened, it automatically is downloaded onto the computer and runs the program. This program devotes 99% of the computers processing power into bitcoin mining for the hacker. The user may notice that the speed of the computer has slowed way down, but most likely will not know what is going on. This malware is especially bad because they have evolved to be undetected by even the most advance antivirus/antimalware.  “Although the core system is well-secured, people who own bitcoins have experienced a litany of heists and fraud” (Juels). 

Bitcoin is a great new cryptocurrency that can make people a great deal of money, very quickly. The cryptocurrency achieved a great deal of attention from being a new innovative currency as well as growing in value extremely quickly. But in reality, Bitcoin is having negative side effects on the global economy and the criminal underworld. Never has it been easier for criminals to get access to illegal firearms and drugs due to the anonymous cryptocurrency, bitcoin. Bitcoin has caused people to go to extreme lengths to get this coin even as far as to hack other user’s computers. Bitcoin is an unstable cryptocurrency fueling crime and should not replace traditional currencies. 
