The Bitcoin lifestyle
Cryptocurrency is all the rage. Commercials for trading sites are all over TV, with celebrities telling you to be bold and invest. Many Americans are getting into crypto, and that number will probably grow as time passes.
However, is trading crypto for you? If it is, you might get into some of the lesser-known ones, or you may go for one of the more prominent options, like Bitcoin. In this article, we will talk about Bitcoin and whether investing in some of it makes sense for you.
How Does Cryptocurrency Work?
There are sites now where comparing Bitcoin interest rates is possible. You can keep your Bitcoin in a location that will pay you interest if you leave it there, similar to what you’d get if you kept it in a bank. However, before we talk about that, let's make sure you understand some crypto basics.
Cryptocurrency is digital currency, meaning that you can’t hold it in your hands the way you can with paper money or coins. It’s an exchange medium that exists only on computer networks. What’s more, it only exists through networks that don’t rely on a central authority. A central authority can be a government or bank.
Because of this, you don’t have an entity that regulates Bitcoin or any other crypto form. Regulation of some kind is probably not that far away, but for now, some people in the financial world have referred to crypto trading as the Wild West.
What Can You Do with Crypto?
We’ve reached the point where a couple of pro athletes have asked their employers to pay them in Bitcoin. That indicates how popular this payment method has become. But what can you really do with crypto?
As it turns out, you can do more and more with crypto as the months and years pass. A list of entities exists that will take crypto as payment, and it’s getting longer every day. For instance, you can now use crypto to buy cars, event tickets, clothes, food, and much more.
Not every entity takes crypto yet, or, if they do, they might only take Bitcoin or one of the other more popular ones. However, as crypto becomes more accepted, don’t let it surprise you if a time comes when you can use it to buy your weekly groceries or maybe even pay your rent with it.
What is Bitcoin?
Now, let’s move on to talking about Bitcoin specifically. There are other popular ones like Binance, Ethereum, and Dogecoin, but Bitcoin is probably the most popular crypto in the world, and it was one of the first ones to capture the public’s interest a few years ago.
Bitcoin is a crypto form that you can send via a peer-to-peer network. You can do so without intermediaries. At the moment, one Bitcoin is worth close to $40,000 US dollars. If you invested in Bitcoin when it cost much less than that, you could be a multimillionaire today.
What is the Bitcoin Lifestyle?
Now that you know about Bitcoin, you might choose to get yourself some. If you do, you don’t have to drop forty grand to do it. Like many other crypto forms, you can purchase part of a Bitcoin. This is a method to dip a toe in if crypto interests you and you want to try investing in it.
If you have Bitcoin or some other crypto form, you can sit on it and see if the value rises. It can do that, but of course, it can fall as well. That is part of what you need to keep in mind with crypto. The value can rise and fall very rapidly, which is nowhere near as likely to happen if you use exclusively traditional US currency.
What’s nice about Bitcoin is that there are many online retailers that take it now. To use it, you need to have some stored in a digital wallet.
Once you find a retailer that takes it, if you want to buy something from them, you copy their address and paste it into your wallet’s designated field. You type in the amount the item costs and hit send. This transaction takes only a couple of seconds.
Is It Too Late to Get in On the Bitcoin Lifestyle?
It’s not too late to buy Bitcoin, though you can’t purchase it as cheaply as you could a few years ago. That ship has sailed, but there are definitely plenty of other crypto forms that the industry values much less at the moment.
While Bitcoin is pretty well established at this point, hundreds of others exist that are trying to rise to prominence. You can gamble on one of those by purchasing it and seeing if the value goes up. It’s similar to buying a publicly-traded stock.
If you talk to a financial advisor about Bitcoin or crypto in general, they will probably tell you to be careful. If you have a certain amount of money to invest, it’s probably best not to sink all of it into a single crypto form. Even Bitcoin, as well established as it is, can drop unexpectedly. That’s the market’s nature.
If you purchase Bitcoin or another crypto form as a long-term investment, you should probably only put a small amount of cash into it. You can put more money into more traditional investment vehicles, like bonds or high-yield savings accounts.
If you’re more daring, or you have some money that you don’t mind losing if the market tanks, you can bet more aggressively on crypto. The younger generations, in particular, seem to enjoy doing this. If you decide it’s worth a try, though, it’s probably best to expect volatile market swings and avoid putting your rent money into it.
Bitcoin and other crypto forms continue capturing the public’s attention, and there’s no reason not to get in on them if this interests you. Just proceed cautiously and remember that no regulation can be a blessing or a curse.
