It’s a fine Sunday morning in the year 1941. After being introduced to the existence of shares of a company, a little boy of eleven years old purchased six shares, three for his sister and three for himself at a price of 38 dollars. This initial investment was just the start of the investing career of a little boy who would grow up to be the most successful investor of all time.
That little boy was the great Warren Buffet. Investing is one of the most acceptable ways to make money in modern times. With the existence of numerous companies offering their shares for sale, with more and more IPOs taking place by the second, investing offers you multiple areas to make your income from.
Investing can be an absolute boon if done right or can be a straight up gamble, and losses pile up if done wrong. If you want to know more about investing and cryptocurrencies in general, visit tribuneonlineng.com to learn more. Investing has its roots buried a lot longer than we think. The oldest evidence found on the basis of investing was found in the code of Hammurabi, all the way back in 1700 B.C.
The most formal record of the first stock market to exist is the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, established in the 1600s. The Dutch East India Company established the Amsterdam Stock Exchange.
They wanted to issue stakes in the company for pretty much the same reasons that companies want to give shares today. To dilute control and raise money.
The landscape of investing and its changes
The landscape of investing has changed a lot from the time active investment activities began. Although there have been massive changes in the world of investment, the core idea of why investing is done remained the same. People want to invest their extra money into profitable ventures and hope for high ROI (Returns On Investment).
So if the core reason why investing began in the first place, how can its landscape change so drastically over time? To explain this, let’s consider a situation.
Let’s say boy A is willing to bet his money ( in the form of physical currency ) to win a bet. This nature of betting with money alone can go for as long as possible until a new form of exchange instrument is introduced.
This is where cryptocurrencies enter the picture. People began investing in activities ( that is, the happening of a specific set of events ) and then proceeded to invest in currencies themselves.
As trade increased between countries and at the time, each country had their money just like the present, but they didn’t have a common currency to compare each other’s worth. The U.S. dollar was used as the comparative currency (the previous being gold). People understood that they could profit from changes in cash.
Let’s say you invested your currency in the U.S. dollar. For every bit of rising in your currency against the U.S. dollar, you profit. This is how currency trading went on for a long time until cryptocurrencies entered the market and changed the landscape of investing forever.
Bitcoin And The Introduction Of Cryptocurrencies
As large scale investing began, more countries began investing globally, and as a lot of profits were made the right way, a lot more profit was being made in the wrong ways.
One of the most significant drawbacks of physical currencies previously when they couldn’t make irreplicable notes was the counterfeiting of money.
Frauds began to print currency that was unsanctioned by the government, which is illegal. Price manipulation was also another effect due to this new inflow of cash which was unsanctioned.
With a more excellent supply of money entering the market, it is only natural for the price of the products to go higher, leading to an inflationary spiral.
Many countries have been victim to this effect which has led to enormous losses. Everything changed in the year 2008 when a new type of currency was invented. This new currency was called Bitcoin. It derives its name from the tiniest information packet of a computer, the bit.
Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, a form of exchange instrument that exists digitally which means, it has no physical existence except a virtual one.
It is secured by cryptography, a form of securing this currency through computer codes which makes this currency accessible only by the sender and the receiver. This eliminates the need for any third party and cannot be replicated, which avoids currency replication.
Bitcoin’s Effect On The Global Economy In The Near Future
Bitcoin has had monumental success in the investment landscape, with over 50-53 million people worldwide have invested in Bitcoin. So what does this mean for the physical market?
What effect does this virtual currency have on the real world? Bitcoins have shaped the near future substantially. The few products that Bitcoins will have on the global economy are as follows.
-
Increase in investments
With the exponential increase in Bitcoin’s value, venture capitalists are now beginning to invest bitcoin into more economic activities. This leads to more things happening in a financial bubble, leading to more jobs being created, increased currency value, etc.
-
Virtual transactions
It’s not like we presently do not have virtual transactions. We’re actually at our highest point in terms of the volume of virtual transactions throughout history.
But as time passes, there will be a point where we will want to move every transaction to go virtual. This solves the problem of storage and fraud that happens with physical currency.
-
Transparency
Bitcoins have a virtual ledger that records the exact number of existing bitcoins, new ones created, and complete transparency in the existence and flow of the virtual currency. Although we have a physical system for currency notes globally, clarity isn’t as great as we wish.
There is still a lot of fraud and manipulation due to errors in records. Done on a virtual platform with a virtual currency, global transactions will have complete transparency without any room for any wrongdoings.