Bitcoin emerged out of the 2008 global economic crisis when big banks were caught misusing borrowers’ money, manipulating the system, and charging exorbitant fees. To address such issues, Bitcoin creators wanted to put the owners of bitcoins in-charge of the transactions, eliminate the middleman, cut high interest rates and transaction fees, and make transactions transparent. They created a distributed network system, where people could control their funds in a transparent way.
Bitcoin has grown rapidly and spread far in a relatively short period of time. Across the world, companies from a large jewelry chain in the US, to a private hospital in Poland, accept bitcoin currency. Multi-billion dollar corporations such as Dell, PayPal, Microsoft, Expedia, etc., are dealing in bitcoins. Websites promote bitcoins, magazines are publishing bitcoin news, and forums are discussing cryptocurrencies and trading in bitcoins. Bitcoin has its own Application Programming Interface (API), price index, trading exchanges and exchange rate.
However, there are issues with bitcoins such as hackers breaking into accounts, high volatility of bitcoins, and long transaction delays. Elsewhere, particularly people in third world countries find Bitcoins as a reliable channel for transacting money bypassing pesky intermediaries.