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Cryptocurrency has no doubt been seeping into your consciousness over the last few weeks.
Bitcoin is experiencing a boom right now - the value has shot up several thousand percent and is still going*. But wait, let's back up a moment. What is Bitcoin?
At its simplest, Bitcoin is a form of digital currency that exists purely electronically. No one controls Bitcoin, it's not printed; it's produced by individuals and businesses using computers to solve mathematical problems to create the currency.
Investing in Bitcoin is not unlike investing in the stock market: if the value of Bitcoin goes up, the value of your stake goes up. If it goes down, the value of your stake goes down. The risk is real and you should never risk anything you're not prepared to lose.
Even if you've no interest in investing at all, Bitcoin is going to be entering the public consciousness even more over the next year. Here's just some of the ways its already doing it.
A single Bitcoin is currently worth £14,000*
That's not bad considering that back in 2013 a single Bitcoin was worth around $638. A $100 investment four years ago might not seem like much, but it would be worth $2,665 now - that's just under £2,000. Bitcoin is experiencing a boom right now, but cryptocurrency is like any other investment: it goes up as well as down. There's always a risk - in 2014 Bitcoin dropped from $638 to $350, and while we're in a boom-time now, there's no telling what will happen next.
You can buy a house using Bitcoin
To be clear: you can't walk into an estate agents, throw your laptop on their desk and walk away with a set of keys, but in December 2017 a four-bedroom house in Essex (not pictured) was sold for the equivalent of £350,000 in Bitcoin.
Ed Casson, sales director of Go Homes, said of the sale: "This re-writes the rule book. And shows there is another way to sell property. Globally this is the first time a domestic property has been sold for Bitcoin. It's a bit of history in the making.
"Selling homes for Bitcoin will become common in the next five years. Our industry has largely remained unchanged in terms of innovation in the last 50 years. We are taking an opportunity to embrace this technology."
There's even an island paradise for sale exclusively through Bitcoin
Once you've bought a house with Bitcoins, where else is there to go? An island hideaway, of course. Thirteen acres of a Caribbean island is available exclusively through Bitcoin, one of the most expensive things available with the cryptocurrency.
The property, on Union Island in St Vincent and the Grenadines, is going for 600 Bitcoins – that's about £4.4 million at the time of writing. That's an eye-watering price tag, but if you invested £440,000 in Bitcoins in January this year, you could afford it now.
The land comes with plans to build a villa and beach bar and is just a few minutes from the airport, so you can nip back and forth from rainy old Britain when it gets too grim.
You know it's a big deal when the most powerful nations in the world want to talk about it at a global summit. French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire has called for Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies to be a topic at the next G20 summit.
“I am going to propose to the next G20 president, Argentina, that at the G20 summit in April we have a discussion all together on the question of bitcoin,” Le Maire told French news channel LCI. “There is evidently a risk of speculation. We need to consider and examine this and see how... with all the other G20 members we can regulate bitcoin.”
The Lazarus Group, a team of hackers linked to the North Korean government, is behind a series of attacks on a cryptocurrency exchange in South Korea, according to the country's spy agency. At least $7 million in digital currency was stolen, thought it has been said that the value has now ballooned to $82.7 million thanks to the Bitcoin boom.
Is there any bigger sign of legitimacy than being the subject of a North Korean digital heist? This isn't a James Bond movie, baby - this is real life.
According to research from the
, it looks like millennials will be taking to Bitcoin in a big way over the next year. At the moment 5% of those aged below 35 have invested in the cryptocurrency, with 11% definitely planning to invest next year and a further 17% considering investing by the end of 2018.
You've no doubt been hearing more and more about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies over the last few months, so it's no surprise that it's predicted to gain significant traction over the next year. But nothing is a sure bet and the trend could easily be bucked, so don't go pouring your life savings into Bitcoins.
Granted, a lot of them are hipster shops in techy areas of London, but it's 100% possible to go into a shop and pay for something with digital currency. If you want something to eat, Burger Bear in Shoreditch will serve you up something tasty in exchange for Bitcoins. If you're after some second-hand games, some branches of CeX now accept Bitcoin.
There's even a tattoo parlour that will ink you in return for Bitcoin. Whether this is the future of shopping remains to be seen, but there is no question: the future is here.
