Money is a root of evil. This saying is true if it is associated with the early development of Bitcoin.
At the beginning of the development of Bitcoin, crypto currency is widely used to support transaction activities that melempet black world that uses Bitcoin in forbidden sale and purchase transactions.
One well-known example is the Silkroad site. For 2.5 years, the site became the biggest black market for online drug sale.
In October 2013, owner Ross Ulbricht known as 'The Dread Pirate Roberts' was arrested by the FBI and thrown into prison.
The FBI gets 144,000 Bitcoin from Silk Road accounts and makes the FBI one of the largest Bitcoin owners in the world.
In addition to being used for illicit drug transactions, Bitcoin is also an option to receive ransomware payments or data capture programs.
Started by cryptolocker, waves of data ransomware begin to launch its action in 2013, encrypt (lock with cryptographic method) data.
Only malware authors have a key to open encrypted data. They will ask for a ransom payment so the victim can reopen his data.
Surely the hostage taker is not stupid by asking the victim to send money to his account at the bank. Because the accounts and the flow of bank funds can be easily tracked by the authorities.
Therefore, the choice falls on the crypto currency of Bitcoin which is either anonymous or decentralized and is not controlled by any central bank or government agency in the world.
Bitcoin at the end of 2017 became the headline of news in the world due to a tremendous surge of value from USD 1,000 to USD 19,000.
Everyone wonders, what makes this crypto currency so powerful. This time it's not SilkRoad or Ransomware but Chicago.
CBOE and CME
Chicago Board Option Exchange (CBOE) and the CME Chicago Mercantile Exchange are the largest option markets in America that offer options from companies, stock indices and futures contracts.The two agencies decided to open a futures contract for Bitcoin in December 2017 where CBOE will commence on December 10, 2017 and CME will open a Bitcoin futures contract on December 17, 2017.
This cash will instantly open the giant access toll roads of the financial markets of the world against Bitcoin and bridge crypto money with real money in the world. This optimism that catapulted the value of Bitcoin nearly 15 times in 2017.
Blockchain, the main strength of Bitcoin
If Samson's secret power is in his hair, then it can be said the heart of Bitcoin is blockchain.The first blockchain introduced by Satoshi Nakamoto is an ever-evolving information called block and connected to each other forming chains and connections between blocks secured by cryptography.
Each block contains link information in the previous block, time stamp and transaction data. Blockchain is designed to hold against unwanted data manipulation or modification.
In the case of Bitcoin, blockchain can be regarded as a distributed ledger and used to record transactions between parties with verifiable and fixed methods (irreversible).
Because it is used in a distributed manner, blockchain is managed collectively. The blockchain data is permanent because once recorded, the data in the blockchain can not be changed without altering data across the entire block chain requiring collusion across the entire blockchain network.
Something that is almost impossible to happen or at least to this day has never happened because of the size of the blockchain network itself.
With the blockchain system and its size estimated to reach hundreds of thousands of interconnected computers and widespread geographic spread, Bitcoin is very difficult or can not be controlled by one institution or state because it is designed to be independent and distributed.
Therefore, Bitcoin transactions are free from corporate influence such as banks, intermediaries and other financial institutions that essentially lead to additional costs in making transactions.
However, due to its high anonymity, Bitcoin is widely used for unlawful activities to be difficult to trace by authorities such as drug trafficking, illegal weapons and ransom demands anonymously.
The threat to bitcoin
Bitcoin is often echoed as a digital currency and has become the accepted currency to make payments like any other currency.However, Bitcoin's high popularity leads to high volatility and this has an adverse effect on the use of Bitcoin as a currency.
Steam, a gaming online service that received Bitcoin as an alternative payment, decided to stop Bitcoin's revenue due to the high volatility that led to the unexpectedly high cost of using Bitcoin.
As an illustration, if you sell villas in Bali for Rp 1 Billion on 1 December with Bitcoin currency and the next day Bitcoin value drop 30%, then the money you receive is only Rp 700 million.
This is certainly very feared by business people so that during high volatility, then its function as currency for payment will be avoided.
Another threat is theft and hacks are very high. One proof is the Bitcoin Japan Go Mt Gox that became the world's largest Bitcoin exchanges for handling 70% of the world's Bitcoin transactions, in February 2014 was forced to go bankrupt for being a victim of hacking and lost hundreds of thousands of Bitcoin.
As the price of Bitcoin skyrocketed, it will automatically increase the risk of hacking and the last victim is Nicehash who must suffer a loss of about USD 68 million because the system was successfully hacked.
If the company amounts to Mt Gox and Nicehash which incidentally has been preparing for hacking effort but still successfully hacked, what about the ordinary users who sometimes stutter the technology.
Let alone protect Bitcoinnya, protect Facebook credentials sometimes still have difficulty. Losing money in Bitcoin is different from losing money in the bank.
At the bank, you can still track where the money was sent and who did it. In many cases of hacking, the bank is also responsible for assisting or providing compensation.
While in Bitcoin, once your money is lost, you can only complain to blockchain and there is no authority that can help return your money.
Therefore, start practicing your credentials well, enable TFA Two Factor Authentication and keep your smart devices from malware that hackers typically use to run their actions.