Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as payment methods

Abstract

The motivation of this final work came from the perception that a time has arrived where payment methods and financial instruments can change significantly as we used to understand them. Although cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin (their maximum expression nowadays) where created some years ago, it was not until 2017 when we experienced their worldwide explosion. To start from the beginning and then going deeper, we must answer first some question; What is a Bitcoin and how does it work? What is Blockchain the technology in which Bitcoin rely on useful for and how secure are your Bitcoins? Are there any other technologies? How anonymous are Bitcoin and other alternative coins (“altcoins” from now on) users? How are cryptocurrencies created and distributed, used for and what determines the price of these coins? How many coins exist, what is an ICO and how reliable or confident they are. Do they have any future from now on and if so, what will be the future of regulation? Do all the countries have the same weight on the definition of standards? Related to this all, will show how it affects the global economic and financial system and why it created a fever among millions of people such as the Gold Rush in California. Is this a millionaire-making machine or, on the other hand, this is a bubble? After gaining some initial knowledge of what this is, we will move further into more complicated terms and issues, and why initially international banks and Governments did not give any value to this environment and now they are in a hurry trying to regulate them, by technology and firms behind some projects and even banking institutions owning some of these cryptocurrencies. What is the main use, purpose with them or the value (or just fear) they have seen on them.