Bitcoins from most people are the currency of Cybercriminals, Terrorists and other dubious people who try to stay anonymous while hiding huge amounts of money.
Unfortunately this is only half the truth about Bitcoin and the underlying technology. Speaking about the underlying technology one has to understand the concept of Blockchains and why this is important for smart contracts and the IoT world.
World Economic Forum: What is blockchain?
Due to the different focuses of companies using the Blockchain technology decided to use Bitcoin backed coins to operate their business. One of the possibilities of Blockchain and decentralised networks is Sia Tech who offers decentralised encrypted data storage and pays the hosts in Sia Coins which can be cased out directly or converted into Bitcoins.
Other companies basing their business model on the same underlying technology are The Dao, Ethereum or Lisk only to mention a few.
All these public ventures have decided to not issues shares like old-fashioned companies but having an Initial Coin Offer (ICO) where people could invest Bitcoins and got back tokens or coins as part of the company while the Developers and Founders still kept a high number of coins to ensure they are able to fund the future development by selling those coins at later stages.
In addition to this more and more banks and companies start to understand the power of the blockchain technology and try to implement it in their daily business. Even though banks and other private ventures don't issue coins to pay for keeping the network up and running the interest in it shows that the decentralisation that the blockchain technology offers has many different way of implementing and utilising it.
CoinDesk: Why ABN Amro Wants to Separate Bitcoin from the Blockchain
This shows that coins can be seen similar to shares. They represent the cash a blockchain company has and has a direct effect on the companies value which is based on the current market value of all coins in circulation.
So why investing in Bitcoins?
Bitcoins also offer another return for investors. Due to the fact that the number of Bitcoins that will ever be mined are predefined by the code and there is no central bank or government that can influence inflation the only influencing factor is for how much people are willing to sell their Bitcoin and how many people want to buy them.
Over the past years Bitcoin has proven to become more and more valuable while other currencies lost their value due to the heavy regulations by our Central Banks. The image aside is one of the most loved representations of the Bitcoin value vs the US Dollar.
This increase in value has also driven the whole Bitcoin mining industry.
Nowadays huge Bitcoin mining facilities in China and Iceland have been established to feed the hunger of not only those nerds but also the average Joe who does not receive more than 1% interest on his money in the bank. Bitcoin cloud mining contracts currently offer a return of over 50% p.a. based on the current Bitcoin price of around $700 US.
This increase as well as the upcoming Bitcoin halving that will cut the reward for keeping the Network up and running to 12.5 BTC have driven not on the innovation of producing more and more power efficient Miners but also the availability of Bitcoins sold on exchanges.
Analysts as well as investors hope for an analogy to the last Bitcoin halving in 2012 where the halving resulted in an all time high of Bitcoin at ~$1400 US.
This reasons have driven many big names from the tech-world as well as foundations as the World Economic Forum to report on Bitcoin and directly promote Bitcoin Cloud mining companies like Genesis-Mining to their readers.
www.weforum.org : These photos show you inside an Icelandic bitcoin mine
Genesis-Mining.com currently offers the highly competitive prices for cloud mining combined with a high reliability and security for investors that the company owns real facilities and will not disappear with the investors money over night.
As the image shows current contracts start as low as $19 US for 100G/Hs which will most likely return of over $30 US over the first year. Assuming that the Bitcoin price will rise this will increase the amount one will get returned.
To calculate the return simple Bitcoin profitability calculators are helpful. But one has to keep in mind that these contracts are lifetime contracts and that they will probably run for longer than a year which will increase the amount significantly after the first year. The little drawback lies in the fine-print which defines lifelong as "as long as it is profitable for the investor but potentially for 100 years"
[Bitcoin Mining Calculator and Profitability Calculator]9http://www.coinwarz.com/calculators/bitcoin-mining-calculator/?h=100.00&p=0.00&pc=0.00&pf=0.00&d=213398925331.32400000&r=12.50000000&er=700.00000000&hc=0.00)
In addition to this Genesis-mining offers a 3% discount to all Investors using the following discount code " t0UEso " on their website www.genesis-mining.com .
Why investing now?
Over the last years more and more investors and banks have started to realise Bitcoin not only as that dubiose currency but also seeing it as a good chance to widen their portfolio. This change in perception combined with the recent success and price jump have put it on the table for not only tech-entusiasts but also for Family Offices overlooking the wealth of big families.
CoinDesk: Family Offices See Legitimacy in Securitized Bitcoin Investments
Another factor that seems to be an even bigger driver than the reward is the uncertainty in the economical situation in more and more countries around the world. For many years Bitcoin has been a known way for Chinese Citizens to move their money oversees without their government being able to monitor or restrict that.
Just recently during the BREXIT Bitcoin has proven to be a reliable save haven for investors as well as British Citizens. While the British Pound lost after the poll results became clear everyone the Bitcoin price started to gain massively.
CoinDesk: Ex-JPMorgan Strategist: Euro Collapse Will Fuel Bitcoin's Growth
This has been the same case during the Greece crises back in 2012 where Bitcoin exchanges saw a massive increase in Greek Citizens moving their money into Bitcoin.
Just a few days ago Deutsche Bank released their forcased on the world economical climate and their prediction on growth. Their indicators show clear signs of a strong recession ahead with 60% of Investors believing that it will happen sooner than later. In addition the analysts of Deutsche Banks have proven over time that their analyses has been highly accurate.
Die Welt: Finanzmärkte rufen globalen Rezessions-Alarm aus
Takeaway
With the growing uncertainty in Europe, China and the United States people are continuing to loose their trust in the old-monetary-system and will continue to move towards crypto-currencies.
Blockchain technologies allow investors to invest in startups that focus on the technology by investing in their coins which are similar to old-fashioned shares.
Beside buying and selling Bitcoins, Cloud mining contract as mentioned above offer a good chance of continuously being part of the Bitcoin Mining Industry and gaining over the coming years. Assuming that this is the reason why the WEF recommended Genesis-Mining.
Even though we don't know what the future might hold for Bitcoin it is very unlikely that the crypto-currency phenomenon will disappear anytime soon.