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This is what it takes to mine a new Bitcoin. The cost difference from country to country is due to the cost difference of the electricity that these countries have for the miners to operate!

Things you should know about Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is often perceived as an anonymous payment network. But in reality, Bitcoin is probably the most transparent payment network in the world. At the same time, Bitcoin can provide acceptable levels of privacy when used correctly.

Bitcoin works with an unprecedented level of transparency that most people are not used to dealing with. All Bitcoin transactions are public, traceable, and permanently stored in the Bitcoin network. Bitcoin addresses are the only information used to define where bitcoins are allocated and where they are sent. These addresses are created privately by each user's wallets. However, once addresses are used, they become tainted by the history of all transactions they are involved with. Anyone can see the balance and all transactions of any address. [Text Source: Bitcoin.org]

Sending bitcoins across borders is as easy as sending them across the street. There are no banks to make you wait three business days, no extra fees for making an international transfer, and no special limitations on the minimum or maximum amount you can send.

There is no fee to receive bitcoins, and many wallets let you control how large a fee to pay when spending. Most wallets have reasonable default fees, and higher fees can encourage faster confirmation of your transactions. Fees are unrelated to the amount transferred, so it's possible to send 100,000 bitcoins for the same fee it costs to send 1 bitcoin. [Text Source: Bitcoin.org]

Yes, Bitcoin is a real money that you can use to buy goods and services. There are tens of thousands of merchants across the world who accept Bitcoin and this number is only growing everyday.

Just like money, bitcoins also don’t grow on trees.

But unlike traditional paper money, you can’t touch, feel, or print bitcoin.

Bitcoins are mined on the blockchain network, and they come into existence when miners successfully mine Bitcoin blocks.

At present, the mining power of Bitcoin’s network is 300 times more powerful than the world’s top 5 supercomputers combined. [Text Source: CoinSutra]

Bitcoin's most common vulnerability is in user error. Bitcoin wallet files that store the necessary private keys can be accidentally deleted, lost or stolen. This is pretty similar to physical cash stored in a digital form.

When a user loses his wallet, it has the effect of removing money out of circulation. Lost bitcoins still remain in the blockchain just like any other bitcoins. However, lost bitcoins remain dormant forever because there is no way for anybody to find the private key(s) that would allow them to be spent again. [Text Source: Bitcoin.org]

Due to the nature of Bitcoin, there is constant talk about “banning” it. This hostility towards Bitcoin is because it works outside the jurisdiction of the traditional banking system.

However, the fundamental design is such that it can’t be banned, only regulated. As long as you have an internet connection and a Bitcoin wallet, you can engage in Bitcoin.

Nevertheless, many countries have tried to ban it, like Bangladesh, Bolivia, Thailand, and Vietnam (among many others). But there are some countries like Australia, Russia, Japan, and Venezuela which have made Bitcoin an official legal tender and are regulating it.

However, some countries like India and even the USA are unclear of their official policy regarding cryptocurrencies.

Try as they might, Bitcoin can’t be pushed away just because it threatens the financial power structure. This is the real beauty of Bitcoin. [Text Source: CoinSutra]

Since 2008, Bitcoin has consistently been making a profit (except in 2014). That happened mostly because of the MtGox hack in 2014. After that, the price dropped from $751 to $285.

The fear of a blockchain hack engulfed investors, but it was not the blockchain which was compromised. MtGox had several fatal and exploitable flaws.

But every other year, the price of Bitcoin has steadily increased. [Text Source: CoinSutra]

Bitcoin's value comes only and directly from people willing to accept them as payment. The price of a bitcoin is determined by supply and demand. When demand for bitcoins increases, the price increases, and when demand falls, the price falls. There is only a limited number of bitcoins in circulation and new bitcoins are created at a predictable and decreasing rate, which means that demand must follow this level of inflation to keep the price stable. [Text Source: Bitcoin.org]

Bitcoin is the first implementation of a concept called "cryptocurrency", which was first described in 1998 by Wei Dai on the cypherpunks mailing list, suggesting the idea of a new form of money that uses cryptography to control its creation and transactions, rather than a central authority. The first Bitcoin specification and proof of concept was published in 2009 in a cryptography mailing list by Satoshi Nakamoto. Satoshi left the project in late 2010 without revealing much about himself. The community has since grown exponentially with many developers working on Bitcoin. [Text Source: Bitcoin.org]

There are currently close to 4.3 million Bitcoins left that aren’t in circulation yet. With only 21 million Bitcoins that will ever exist, this means that there are about 16.7 million Bitcoins currently available. Out of those 16.7 million, it’s estimated that 30% of those may be lost forever as a result of things like hard drive crashes and misplaced private keys. [Text Source: CoinCentral.com]

Nobody owns the Bitcoin network much like no one owns the technology behind email. Bitcoin is controlled by all Bitcoin users around the world. While developers are improving the software, they can't force a change in the Bitcoin protocol because all users are free to choose what software and version they use. In order to stay compatible with each other, all users need to use software complying with the same rules. Bitcoin can only work correctly with a complete consensus among all users. Therefore, all users and developers have a strong incentive to protect this consensus. [Text Source: Bitcoin.org]

Sounds Supportive!

The Fate of Crypto in the USA: Senate Hearing and Other Implications to Legislations - Gusture As CFTC and SEC chiefs sounded much to be in support of the Blockchain, the Bitcoin investors had a sigh of relief as the Bitcoin prices saw a surge.

It's important to remember that if there were no bitcoin, there would be no distributed ledger technology [Blockchain].
—J. Christopher Giancarlo | Chairman of CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission), U.S.A

Back in 2010, Florida programmer Laszlo Hanyecz talked someone into accepting the 10,000 Bitcoins he'd "mined" on his computer in exchange for two pizzas. The Bitcoin Pizza purchase that's worth $61 Million today. [Text Source: Forbes]

Individuals and companies participating in the Bitcoin network for verifying transactions are called miners. Bitcoins are released during the mining process, but this rate is declining due to halving events. One bitcoin can be divided up to eight decimal places. Each of these smallest units of a bitcoin is called a “Satoshi”. The mining process maintains the circulation of the Bitcoins. A computationally difficult puzzle must be solved in order to add a new block on the blockchain. The reward of solving these puzzles is nothing but Bitcoins. The difficulty level of the puzzles is proportional to the amount of Bitcoins being released. Thus, more Bitcoins means higher level of difficulty. Initially Graphic Processing Units (GPU) are used for Bitcoin mining. However, due to difficulty, more computational power is required and therefore now participants need to have special hardware such as Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASIC) to perform mining. [Text Source: Gusture]

There are currently close to 4.22 million Bitcoins left that aren’t in circulation yet. With only 21 million Bitcoins that will ever exist, this means that there are about 16.78 million Bitcoins currently available (in circulation). Out of those 16.78 million, it’s estimated that 30% of those may be lost forever as a result of things like hard drive crashes and misplaced private keys. [Text source: Coincentral]

It [Bitcoin] is an interesting experiment, but it's not a permanent feature of our lives. We are over-emphasizing bitcoin, we should broaden it out to blockchain, which will have other applications.
—Robert Shiller | The Nobel Prize Winner

In areas like cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin, we should be looking at these very seriously, precisely because of the way they can be used, particularly by criminals.
—Theresa May | Prime Minister of UK

Bitcoin was rated a “C+” by Weiss, it means "Hold".

Cryptocurrencies Rated by Weiss, Bitcoin Rated the Least. Here’s What You Need to Know - Gusture Bitcoin was rated a “C+” by Weiss, while Ether and Steem earned a B and B- respectively. The most interesting thing about this review is that no currency has managed to be rated “A” in this report.

Crypotocurrencies should not be banned, as it is a great new technology in development, which no one is yet to comprehend.
—Herman Gref | CEO of Sberbank of Russia

My take is that bitcoin is much more today a commodity that somebody could invest in; and honestly, somewhat of a speculative commodity that people can invest in.
—Alfred Kelly | CEO of Visa

I made the decision to accept Bitcoin because I believe that it represents the free-market economic principles that make Texas a national leader in innovation and entrepreneurship.
—Greg Abbott | Governor of Texas, U.S.A

Total Crypto Market Capitalization (MCAP) from Yesterday's Dip (17 Jan) vs Today's Recovery (18 Jan). That's more than $125 Billion change/upward.

An intelligent investor sees
an opportunity in dip than risk.
—Mohith Agadi | Founder of Cryptobond

The divine line "Bitcoin/Cryptocurrency is for criminals" is a cunning defensive strategy created by so called traditional financial services sector.
—Mohith Agadi | Founder of Cryptobond

Bitcoin may be the TCP/IP of money.
—Paul Buchheit | Creator of Gmail

Recap: From 1 July 2017, Australia will align the GST treatment of digital currency (such as Bitcoin) with money. Removing the double taxation.
—Australian Government (The GST Act)