A

Seminar Project Report on

Title

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the award of the degree of

BACHELOR IN TECHNOLOGY

Affiliated to

Dr.BabasahebAmbedkar Technological University, Lonere

By

Nikhil Mahadev Potdar

TE(CSE)
 M.S.Bidve Engineering College, Latur, Maharashtra.
Winter-2019

CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that Nikhil Mahadev Potdar has successfully completed his Seminar on
Bitcoin for the fulfillment of the Bachelor in Technology as prescribed by
Dr.BabasahebAmbedkar Technological University, Lonere during academic year 2019-20.

Principal
(Prof.N.B.Khatod)
 Acknowledgment

I wish to extend my sincere gratitude to my seminar guide, prof. Dharashive sir ,Department
of Computer Science Engineering ,for his valuable guidance and encouragement which has been
absolutely helpful in successful completion of this seminar.

I am indebted to prof.Dharashive sir,for his valuable support. I am also grateful to my parents

and friends for their timely which I wouldn’t have finished my seminar successfully. I extend my
thanks to all my well-wishers and all those who have contributed directly and indirectly for the
completion of this work.

And last but not the least;I thank God Almighty for his blessings without which the completion
of this seminar would not have been possible.
 Table of contents:

Sr.No. Topic Name Page no.

1. Introduction 1

2. Existing System Problem 2

3. Description of work 3-17
4. Conclusion 18
5. References 19
 Page no:1

Introduction

Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency. It is a decentralized digital currency without a central bank or single

administrator that can be sent from user to user on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network without the
need for intermediaries.
Transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a
public distributed ledger called a blockchain. Bitcoin was invented in 2008 by an unknown
person or group of people using the name Satoshi Nakamoto and started in 2009 when its source
code was released as open-source software. Bitcoins are created as a reward for a process known
as mining. They can be exchanged for other currencies, products, and services.Research
produced by University of Cambridge estimates that in 2017, there were 2.9 to 5.8 million
unique users using a cryptocurrency wallet, most of them using bitcoin.
Bitcoin has been criticized for its use in illegal transactions, its high electricity consumption,
price volatility, and thefts from exchanges. Some economists, including several Nobel laureates,
have characterized it as a speculative bubble. Bitcoin has also been used as an investment,
although several regulatory agencies have issued investor alerts about bitcoin.
 Existing System Problem

1) Who governs Bitcoin?

2) What is a Bitcoin wallet?

3) Is Bitcoin Anonymous?

4) Can I trade bitcoin without selling at an exchange?

5) will bitocin increase block size?

6)is bitcoin safe to use?

7)how is bitcoin issued?

8)what is the limit of bitcoin?

 Page no:3

Description of work

History:

Creation:

The domain name "bitcoin.org" was registered on 18 August 2008. On 31 October 2008, a link
to a paper authored by Satoshi Nakamoto titled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash
System was posted to a cryptography mailing list. Nakamoto implemented the bitcoin software
as open-source code and released it in January 2009. Nakamoto's identity remains unknown.
On 3 January 2009, the bitcoin network was created when Nakamoto mined the first block of the
chain, known as the genesis block. Embedded in the coinbase of this block was the text "The
Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks". This note references a
headline published by The Times and has been interpreted as both a timestamp and a comment on
the instability caused by fractional-reserve banking.
The receiver of the first bitcoin transaction was cypherpunk Hal Finney, who had created the
first reusable proof-of-work system (RPoW) in 2004. Finney downloaded the bitcoin software on
its release date, and on 12 January 2009 received ten bitcoins from Nakamoto. Other early
cypherpunk supporters were creators of bitcoin predecessors: Wei Dai, creator of b-money,
and Nick Szabo, creator of bit gold. In 2010, the first known commercial transaction using
bitcoin occurred when programmer Laszlo Hanyecz bought two Papa John's pizzas for ₿10,000.
Blockchain analysts estimate that Nakamoto had mined about one million bitcoins before
disappearing in 2010, when he handed the network alert key and control of the code repository
over to Gavin Andresen. Andresen later became lead developer at the Bitcoin Foundation.
Andresen then sought to decentralize control. This left opportunity for controversy to develop
over the future development path of bitcoin, in contrast to the perceived authority of Nakamoto's
contributions.

2011–2012:

After early "proof-of-concept" transactions, the first major users of bitcoin were black markets,
such as Silk Road. During its 30 months of existence, beginning in February 2011, Silk Road
exclusively accepted bitcoins as payment, transacting 9.9 million in bitcoins, worth about $214
million.
In 2011, the price started at $0.30 per bitcoin, growing to $5.27 for the year. The price rose to
$31.50 on 8 June. Within a month the price fell to $11.00. The next month it fell to $7.80, and in
another month to $4.77.
 Page no:4
Litecoin, an early bitcoin spin-off or altcoin, appeared in October 2011. Many altcoins have been
created since then.
In 2012, bitcoin prices started at $5.27 growing to $13.30 for the year. By 9 January the price
had risen to $7.38, but then crashed by 49% to $3.80 over the next 16 days. The price then rose
to $16.41 on 17 August, but fell by 57% to $7.10 over the next three days.
The Bitcoin Foundation was founded in September 2012 to promote bitcoin's development and
uptake.

2013–2016:

In 2013, prices started at $13.30 rising to $770 by 1 January 2014.

In March 2013 the blockchain temporarily split into two independent chains with different rules
due to a bug in version 0.8 of the bitcoin software. The two blockchains operated simultaneously
for six hours, each with its own version of the transaction history from the moment of the split.
Normal operation was restored when the majority of the network downgraded to version 0.7 of
the bitcoin software, selecting the backward compatible version of the blockchain. As a result,
this blockchain became the longest chain and could be accepted by all participants, regardless of
their bitcoin software version. During the split, the Mt. Gox exchange briefly halted bitcoin
deposits and the price dropped by 23% to $37 before recovering to previous level of
approximately $48 in the following hours. The US Financial Crimes Enforcement
Network (FinCEN) established regulatory guidelines for "decentralized virtual currencies" such
as bitcoin, classifying American bitcoin miners who sell their generated bitcoins as Money
Service Businesses (MSBs), that are subject to registration or other legal obligations. In April,
exchanges BitInstant and Mt. Gox experienced processing delays due to insufficient
capacityresulting in the bitcoin price dropping from $266 to $76 before returning to $160 within
six hours. The bitcoin price rose to $259 on 10 April, but then crashed by 83% to $45 over the
next three days. On 15 May 2013, US authorities seized accounts associated with Mt. Gox after
discovering it had not registered as a money transmitter with FinCEN in the US. On 23 June
2013, the US Drug Enforcement Administration listed ₿11.02 as a seized asset in a United States
Department of Justice seizure notice pursuant to 21 U.S.C. § 881. This marked the first time a
government agency had seized bitcoin. The FBI seized about ₿30,000 in October 2013 from
the dark web website Silk Road during the arrest of Ross William Ulbrich. These bitcoins were
sold at blind auction by the United States Marshals Service to venture capital investor Tim
Draper. Bitcoin's price rose to $755 on 19 November and crashed by 50% to $378 the same day.
On 30 November 2013 the price reached $1,163 before starting a long-term crash, declining by
87% to $152 in January 2015. On 5 December 2013, the People's Bank of China prohibited
Chinese financial institutions from using bitcoins. After the announcement, the value of bitcoins
dropped, and Baidu no longer accepted bitcoins for certain services. Buying real-world goods
with any virtual currency had been illegal in China since at least 2009.
 Page no:5
In 2014, prices started at $770 and fell to $314 for the year.
On July 30, 2014, the Wikimedia Foundation started accepting donations of bitcoin.
In 2015. prices started at $314 and rose to $434 for the year. In 2016 prices rose to $998 on 1
January 2017.

2017–2019:

Prices started at $998 in 2017 and rose to $13,412.44 on 1 January 2018, after reaching its all-
time high of $19,783.06 on 17 December 2017.
China banned trading in bitcoin, with first steps taken in September 2017, and a complete ban
that started on 1 February 2018. Bitcoin prices then fell from $9,052 to $6,914 on 5 February
2018. The percentage of bitcoin trading in the Chinese renminbi fell from over 90% in
September 2017 to less than 1% in June 2018. On August 1, 2017 a fork of the blockchain
created Bitcoin Cash.
Throughout the rest of the first half of 2018, bitcoin's price fluctuated between $11,480 and
$5,848. On 1 July 2018, bitcoin's price was $6,343. The price on January 1, 2019 was $3,747,
down 72% for 2018 and down 81% since the all-time high.
Bitcoin prices were negatively affected by several hacks or thefts from cryptocurrency
exchanges, including thefts from Coincheck in January 2018, Coinrail and Bithumb in June, and
Bancor in July. For the first six months of 2018, $761 million worth of cryptocurrencies was
reported stolen from exchanges. Bitcoin's price was affected even though other cryptocurrencies
were stolen at Coinrail and Bancor as investors worried about the security of cryptocurrency
exchanges. In September 2019 the Intercontinental Exchange (the owner of the NYSE) began
trading of bitcoin futures.

Design:

The unit of account of the bitcoin system is a bitcoin. Ticker symbols used to represent bitcoin
are BTC and XBT. Its Unicode character is ₿. Small amounts of bitcoin used as alternative units
are millibitcoin (mBTC), and satoshi (sat). Named in homage to bitcoin's creator, a satoshi is the
smallest amount within bitcoin representing 0.00000001 bitcoins, one hundred millionth of a
bitcoin. A millibitcoin equals 0.001 bitcoins; one thousandth of a bitcoin or 100,000 satoshis.

Blockchain:
 Page no:6
The bitcoin blockchain is a public ledger that records bitcoin transactions. It is implemented as a
chain of blocks, each block containing a hash of the previous block up to the genesis block of the
chain. A network of communicating nodes running bitcoin software maintains the blockchain.
:215–219
Transactions of the form payer X sends Y bitcoins to payee Z are broadcast to this network
using readily available software applications.
Network nodes can validate transactions, add them to their copy of the ledger, and then broadcast
these ledger additions to other nodes. To achieve independent verification of the chain of
ownership each network node stores its own copy of the blockchain. About every 10 minutes, a
new group of accepted transactions, called a block, is created, added to the blockchain, and
quickly published to all nodes, without requiring central oversight. This allows bitcoin software
to determine when a particular bitcoin was spent, which is needed to prevent double-spending. A
conventional ledger records the transfers of actual bills or promissory notes that exist apart from
it, but the blockchain is the only place that bitcoins can be said to exist in the form of unspent
outputs of transactions.

Transactions

Transactions are defined using a Forth-like scripting language. :ch. 5 Transactions consist of one or
more inputs and one or more outputs. When a user sends bitcoins, the user designates each
address and the amount of bitcoin being sent to that address in an output. To prevent double
spending, each input must refer to a previous unspent output in the blockchain. The use of
multiple inputs corresponds to the use of multiple coins in a cash transaction. Since transactions
can have multiple outputs, users can send bitcoins to multiple recipients in one transaction. As in
a cash transaction, the sum of inputs (coins used to pay) can exceed the intended sum of
payments. In such a case, an additional output is used, returning the change back to the
payer. Any input satoshis not accounted for in the transaction outputs become the transaction fee.

Transaction fees:

Though transaction fees are optional, miners can choose which transactions to process and
prioritize those that pay higher fees. Miners may choose transactions based on the fee paid
relative to their storage size, not the absolute amount of money paid as a fee. These fees are
generally measured in satoshis per byte (sat/b). The size of transactions is dependent on the
number of inputs used to create the transaction, and the number of outputs.
 Page no:7

Decentralization
Bitcoin is decentralized:

 Bitcoin does not have a central authority.

 There is no central server; the bitcoin network is peer-to-peer.
 There is no central storage; the bitcoin ledger is distributed.
 The ledger is public; anybody can store it on their computer.
 There is no single administrator the ledger is maintained by a network of equally privileged
miners.
 Anybody can become a miner.
 The additions to the ledger are maintained through competition. Until a new block is added
to the ledger, it is not known which miner will create the block.
 The issuance of bitcoins is decentralized. They are issued as a reward for the creation of a
new block.
 Anybody can create a new bitcoin address (a bitcoin counterpart of a bank account) without
needing any approval.
 Anybody can send a transaction to the network without needing any approval; the network
merely confirms that the transaction is legitimate.

Mining:

Mining is a record-keeping service done through the use of computer processing power. Miners
keep the blockchain consistent, complete, and unalterable by repeatedly grouping newly
broadcast transactions into a block, which is then broadcast to the network and verified by
recipient nodes. Each block contains a SHA-256 cryptographic hash of the previous block, thus
linking it to the previous block and giving the blockchain its name.
To be accepted by the rest of the network, a new block must contain a proof-of-work (PoW). The
system used is based on Adam Back's 1997 anti-spam scheme, Hashcash. The PoW requires
miners to find a number called a nonce, such that when the block content is hashed along with
the nonce, the result is numerically smaller than the network's difficulty target. This proof is easy
for any node in the network to verify, but extremely time-consuming to generate, as for a secure
cryptographic hash, miners must try many different nonce values (usually the sequence of tested
values is the ascending natural numbers: 0, 1, 2, 3, ) before meeting the difficulty target.
 Page no:8
Every 2,016 blocks (approximately 14 days at roughly 10 min per block), the difficulty target is
adjusted based on the network's recent performance, with the aim of keeping the average time
between new blocks at ten minutes. In this way the system automatically adapts to the total
amount of mining power on the network. Between 1 March 2014 and 1 March 2015, the average
number of nonces miners had to try before creating a new block increased from 16.4 quintillion
to 200.5 quintillion.
The proof-of-work system, alongside the chaining of blocks, makes modifications of the
blockchain extremely hard, as an attacker must modify all subsequent blocks in order for the
modifications of one block to be accepted. As new blocks are mined all the time, the difficulty of
modifying a block increases as time passes and the number of subsequent blocks (also
called confirmations of the given block) increases.

Economics:

Bitcoin is a digital asset designed to work in peer-to-peer transactions as a currency, Bitcoins

have three qualities useful in a currency, according to The Economist in January 2015: they are
"hard to earn, limited in supply and easy to verify." Per some researchers, as of 2015, bitcoin
functions more as a payment system than as a currency.
Economists define money as a store of value, a medium of exchange, and a unit of
account.According to The Economist in 2014, bitcoin functions best as a medium of exchange.
However, this is debated, and a 2018 assessment by The Economist stated that cryptocurrencies
met none of these three criteria. Yale economist Robert J. Shiller writes that bitcoin has potential
as a unit of account for measuring the relative value of goods, as with Chile's Unidad de
Fomento, but that "Bitcoin in its present form [...] doesn’t really solve any sensible economic
problem".
According to research by Cambridge University, between 2.9 million and 5.8 million unique
users used a cryptocurrency wallet in 2017, most of them for bitcoin. The number of users has
grown significantly since 2013, when there were 300,000–1.3 million users.
In addition to being characterized as a cryptocurrency, bitcoin is also characterized as a payment
system.
 Page no-9
Acceptance by merchants:
The overwhelming majority of bitcoin transactions take place on a cryptocurrency exchange,
rather than being used in transactions with merchants. Delays processing payments through the
blockchain of about ten minutes make bitcoin use very difficult in a retail setting. Prices are not
usually quoted in units of bitcoin and many trades involve one, or sometimes two, conversions
into conventional currencies.Merchants that do accept bitcoin payments may use payment
service providers to perform the conversions.
In 2017 and 2018 bitcoin's acceptance among major online retailers included only three of the
top 500 U.S. online merchants, down from five in 2016. Reasons for this decline include high
transaction fees due to bitcoin's scalability issues and long transaction times.
Bloomberg reported that the largest 17 crypto merchant-processing services handled $69 million
in June 2018, down from $411 million in September 2017. Bitcoin is "not actually usable" for
retail transactions because of high costs and the inability to process chargebacks, according to
Nicholas Weaver, a researcher quoted by Bloomberg. High price volatility and transaction fees
make paying for small retail purchases with bitcoin impractical, according to economist Kim
Grauer. However, bitcoin continues to be used for large-item purchases on sites such
as Overstock.com, and for cross-border payments to freelancers and other vendors.

Legal status, tax and regulation:

Because of bitcoin's decentralized nature and its trading on online exchanges located in many
countries, regulation of bitcoin has been difficult. However, the use of bitcoin can be
criminalized, and shutting down exchanges and the peer-to-peer economy in a given country
would constitute a de facto ban. The legal status of bitcoin varies substantially from country to
 Page no:10
country and is still undefined or changing in many of them. Regulations and bans that apply to
bitcoin probably extend to similar cryptocurrency systems.
According to the Library of Congress, an "absolute ban" on trading or using cryptocurrencies
applies in eight countries: Algeria, Bolivia, Egypt, Iraq, Morocco, Nepal, Pakistan, and the
United Arab Emirates. An "implicit ban" applies in another 15 countries, which include Bahrain,
Bangladesh, China, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Indonesia, Iran, Kuwait, Lesotho,
Lithuania, Macau, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Taiwan.

Regulatory warnings:

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission has issued four "Customer Advisories" for
bitcoin and related investments. A July 2018 warning emphasized that trading in any
cryptocurrency is often speculative, and there is a risk of theft from hacking, and fraud. [182] A
December 2017 advisory warned that virtual currencies are risky because:

 the exchanges are not regulated or supervised by a government agency

 the exchanges may lack system safeguards and customer protections
 large price swings and "flash crashes"
 market manipulation
 theft and hacking
 self-dealing by the exchanges
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has also issued warnings. A May 2014 "Investor
Alert" warned that investments involving bitcoin might have high rates of fraud, and that
investors might be solicited on social media sites. An earlier "Investor Alert" warned about the
use of bitcoin in Ponzi schemes.
The European Banking Authority issued a warning in 2013 focusing on the lack of regulation of
bitcoin, the chance that exchanges would be hacked, the volatility of bitcoin's price, and general
fraud.[186]
The self-regulatory organization FINRA and the North American Securities Administrators
Association have both issued investor alerts about bitcoin.
 Page no:11
Price manipulation investigation:

An official investigation into bitcoin traders was reported in May 2018. The U.S. Justice
Department launched an investigation into possible price manipulation, including the techniques
of spoofing and wash trades. Traders in the U.S., the U.K, South Korea, and possibly other
countries are being investigated. Brett Redfearn, head of the U.S. Securities and Exchange
Commission's Division of Trading and Markets, had identified several manipulation techniques
of concern in March 2018.
The U.S. federal investigation was prompted by concerns of possible manipulation during futures
settlement dates. The final settlement price of CME bitcoin futures is determined by prices on
four exchanges, Bitstamp, Coinbase, itBit and Kraken. Following the first delivery date in
January 2018, the CME requested extensive detailed trading information but several of the
exchanges refused to provide it and later provided only limited data. The Commodity Futures
Trading Commission then subpoenaed the data from the exchanges.
State and provincial securities regulators, coordinated through the North American Securities
Administrators Association, are investigating "bitcoin scams" and ICOs in 40 jurisdictions.
Academic research published in the Journal of Monetary Economics concluded that price
manipulation occurred during the Mt Gox bitcoin theft and that the market remains vulnerable to
manipulation. The history of hacks, fraud and theft involving bitcoin dates back to at least 2011.
Research by John M. Griffin and Amin Shams in 2018 suggests that trading associated with
increases in the amount of the Tether cryptocurrency and associated trading at
the Bitfinex exchange account for about half of the price increase in bitcoin in late 2017.
J.L. van der Velde, CEO of both Bitfinex and Tether, denied the claims of price manipulation:
"Bitfinex nor Tether is, or has ever, engaged in any sort of market or price manipulation. Tether
issuances cannot be used to prop up the price of bitcoin or any other coin/token on Bitfinex.

Price and volatility:

The price of bitcoins has gone through cycles of appreciation and depreciation referred to by
some as bubbles and busts. In 2011, the value of one bitcoin rapidly rose from about US$0.30 to
US$32 before returning to US$2. In the latter half of 2012 and during the 2012–13 Cypriot
financial crisis, the bitcoin price began to rise, reaching a high of US$266 on 10 April 2013,
before crashing to around US$50. On 29 November 2013, the cost of one bitcoin rose to a peak
of US$1,242. In 2014, the price fell sharply, and as of April remained depressed at little more
than half 2013 prices. As of August 2014 it was under US$600. During their time as bitcoin
developers, Gavin Andresen and Mike Hearnwarned that bubbles may occur.
According to Mark T. Williams, as of 2014, bitcoin has volatility seven times greater than gold,
eight times greater than the S&P 500, and 18 times greater than the US dollar.
 Page no:12

Venture capital:

Venture capitalists, such as Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, which invested US$3 million in BitPay,
do not purchase bitcoins themselves, but instead fund bitcoin infrastructure that provides
payment systems to merchants, exchanges, wallet services, etc. In 2012, an incubator for bitcoin-
focused start-ups was founded by Adam Draper, with financing help from his father, venture
capitalist Tim Draper, one of the largest bitcoin holders after winning an auction of 30,000
bitcoins, at the time called "mystery buyer". The company's goal is to fund 100 bitcoin
businesses within 2–3 years with $10,000 to $20,000 for a 6% stake. Investors also invest in
bitcoin mining.According to a 2015 study by Paolo Tasca, bitcoin startups raised almost $1
billion in three years (Q1 2012 – Q1 2015).

Bitcoin Advantages:

Freedom in Payment:

 With Bitcoin it is very possible to be able to send and get money anywhere in the world at any
given time.
 You don’t have to worry about crossing borders, rescheduling for bank holidays, or any other
limitations one might think will occur when transferring money.
 You are in control of your money with Bitcoin. There is no central authority figure in the
Bitcoin network.

Control and Security:

 Allowing users to be in control of their transactions help keep Bitcoin safe for the network.
 Merchants cannot charge extra fees on anything without being noticed. They must talk with
the consumer before adding any charges.
 Payments in Bitcoin can be made and finalized without one’s personal information being tied
to the transactions.


Due to the fact that personal information is kept hidden from prying eyes, Bitcoin protects
against identity theft.
 Bitcoin can be backed up and encrypted to ensure the safety of your money.
 Information is Transparent: page no:13

 With the block chain, all finalized transactions are available for everyone to see, however
personal information is hidden.
 Your public address is what is visible; however, your personal information is not tied to this.
 Anyone at anytime can verify transactions in the Bitcoin block chain.
 Bitcoin protocol cannot be manipulated by any person, organization, or government. This is
due to Bitcoin being cryptographically secure.

Very Low Fees:

 Currently there are either no fees, or very low fees within Bitcoin payments.
 With transactions, users might include fees in order to process the transactions faster. The
higher the fee, the more priority it gets within the network and the quicker it gets processed.
 Digital Currency exchanges help merchant process transactions by converting bitcoins into
fiat currency. These services generally have lower fees than credit cards and PayPal.

Fewer Risks for Merchants:

 Due to the fact that Bitcoin transactions cannot be reversed, do not carry with them personal
information, and are secure, merchants are protected from potential losses that might occur
from fraud.
 With Bitcoin, merchants are able to do business where crime rates and fraud rates may be
high. This is because it is very hard to cheat or con anyone in Bitcoin due to the public ledger,
otherwise known as the block chain.

Now that we’ve covered the basic advantages, we can move on to the disadvantages. There are
three main ones that need to be pointed out. This is so you can get an overall idea of what to
expect with Bitcoin. We don’t want anything to be hidden from our viewers.

Bitcoin Disadvantages:

Lack of Awareness & Understanding:

 Fact is many people are still unaware of digital currencies and Bitcoin.
 People need to be educated about Bitcoin to be able to apply it to their lives.
 Networking is a must to spread the word on Bitcoin.
 Businesses are accepting bitcoins because of the advantages, but the list is relatively small

 compared to physical currencies.
 Page no:14
 Companies like Tigerdirect and Overstock accepting Bitcoin as payment is great. However, if
they do not have a knowledgeable staff that understands digital currencies, how will they help
customers understand and use Bitcoin for transactions?
 The workers need to be educated on Bitcoin so that they can help the customers. This will
definitely take some time and effort. Otherwise, what is the benefit of such large companies
accepting Bitcoin if its staff doesn’t even know what digital currencies are?

Risk and Volatility:

 Bitcoin has volatility mainly due to the fact that there is a limited amount of coins and the
demand for them increases by each passing day.
 However, it is expected that the volatility will decrease as more time goes on.
 As more businesses, medias, and trading centers begin to accept Bitcoin, its’ price will
eventually settle down.
 Currently, Bitcoin’s price bounces everyday mainly due to current events that are related to
digital currencies.
Still Developing
 Bitcoin is still at its infancy stage with incomplete features that are in development.
 To make the digital currency more secure and accessible, new features, tools, and services are
currently being developed.
The 3 Most Visited Websites in the Bitcoin Ecosystem Revealed:

In the past year, many websites and companies have tried to attract new Bitcoin users around
the world. From exchanges to news sites, these companies cater to millions of visitors each
month. I tend to deal a lot with comparisons and reviews of different Bitcoin services. In
today’s post, I would like to present my latest research results that uncover the ten websites
that get the highest Bitcoin traffic around the web. You be surprised at some of the websites
that made it to the list.

The list is ordered by the amount of traffic each site receives. Since I couldn’t know the exact
amount of traffic, I used web research tools such as Alexa and SimilarWeb to estimate. Each
site will have its Alexa rank displayed (the lower rank, the more traffic the website gets) and
also a graph of how this rank changed in the last few months.

I’ve also added additional background information on each website. For example, when the
website was established, how many employees are working in each company (if this data
was available) and also who is the main audience of the website.

Finally, I’ve added some data of the site’s reputation from around the web – mainly domain
authority and how many different websites from around the web are linking to these sites.
Domain Authority is basically a number from 1 to 100 which represents how authoritative
 Page no:15

this site is considered to be throughout the web. It is calculated by various factors that
resemble how Google evaluates websites.

1 – Blockchain.info

Overview: Blockchain.info supplies a free hybrid wallet for Bitcoin users so they will be able
to store their Bitcoins and access them from anywhere in the world. It also serves as a very
popular block explorer.

Founded: August 28, 2011

Employees: 29

Alexa Rank: 3641

Est. June 2015 traffic: 4M

Users: 3.8M

Main audience: United States (29%)

Business model: Ad revenue on homepage

Apps: Andriod App, iOS App, ZeroBlock, Blockchain merchant, block explorer

Facebook Fans: 18,664

Twitter Followers: 58.5K

Domain Authority: 67 /100

#of websites linking to this site around the web: 914

Additional information:
 Page no:16

$30M raised from the leading investors in Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and London.

2.FreeBitco.in

Overview: The most popular Bitcoin faucet today, allowing players to win Bitcoins by
opening up a free account.

Founded: Oct. 2013

Alexa Rank: 4795

Est. June 2015 traffic: 6.4M

Main audience: Russia (34%)

Business model: Previously from ads, today unclear

Domain Authority: 54/100

#of websites linking to this site around the web: 121

Additional information:

In the last month, Freebitco.in has gone through a website redesign and did not monetize
through ads. Like many other faucets, the website offers a referral program that helps it to
gain more users.
 Page no:17

3 – Coinbase

Overview: Coinbase is a company supplying a wide variety of Bitcoin services such as a

Bitcoin wallet, a Bitcoin exchange, merchant payment solutions and also acts as a Bitcoin
broker. It is considered to be one of the leading companies in the Bitcoin ecosystem today.

Founded: June 1st, 2012

Employees: 100-250

Alexa Rank: 6532

Est. April 2015 traffic: 2.4 million

Users: 2.4M (39K merchants)

Main audience: US (70%)

Business model: Transaction fees from buyers and merchants.

Apps: Android – Coinbase wallet, Coinbase exchange, Coinbase merchant. iOS – Coinbase
wallet.

Facebook Fans: 17,582 fans

Twitter Followers: 52.4K followers

Domain Authority: 66 out of 100

#of websites linking to this site around the web: 439

Additional information:

Founded at Y-Combinator, Received $106.7m in VC funding (complete investor list),

Acquired Blockr.io and Kippt.
 Page no:18
Conclusion:

There we have it folks. With this, we now have both sides of the coin. Bitcoin, as we can see, is
not perfect. It does have many advantages that physical currencies do not provide its users;
however, it also has its disadvantages. This is mostly due to the fact that Bitcoin is still a
relatively young and new currency. People are just beginning to become more aware of it. In
order for Bitcoin to succeed, more people need to understand what it is and not let their
preconceived notions distort the concept of digital currencies.

There are always pros and cons to any situation in life. To be able to make a good decision, we
need to weigh the good and bad thoroughly before finalizing your choice. Do the same for
Bitcoin.
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References:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin

2. https://news.bitcoin.com/the-9-most-visited-websites-in-bitcoin/

3. https://coinreport.net/coin-101/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-bitcoin/

4. https://charts.woobull.com/bitcoin-nvt-ratio/