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Ⅳ Global Issues

A new trend of Investment

In 2008, programmer Satoshi Nakamoto
(false name) made online cryptocurrency
for the first time ever and payment sys-
tem. Cryptocurrncy refers to a digital or
virtual currency that uses code for secu-
rity. Many people could earn megabucks
by buying it at a low price and selling at
a high price. It is ‘Bitcoin’ that many peo-
ple are continuously paying attention to. Almost every modern person might know this ‘Bitcoin’ since not
only investors but also politicians are keeping eyes on it.
We can ‘mine’ the coins when the computers solve very difficult math problems and encrypt it in the block
like the bank account. However, as the amount of mining is increasing, the difficulty of the problem is
also getting higher. Therefore, normal people cannot conceive the idea of mining.
In the process of development, only 21,000,000 coins were made. The total amount is limited, so it has
investment value like gold. At that time, one coin had been only 0.007\ (0.000007$), but as its value in-
creased, its price skyrocketed to about 20,000,000\ (18,805$). That is why the number of buyers are in-
creasing, but is also why government regulates exchanges of it.
Cryptocurrency is like a double-edged sword. First, we can make a
lot of money by investing like with gold. Also, there is no concern
about inflation because the amount is finite. And, all exchanges are
recorded, so transparent transactions are possible. However, money
laundering can occur because of the anonymity. Also, if a stock mar-
ket is hacked, many people can lose their money. Recently, Youbit,
one of the Korean stock markets, was hacked in December, 2017 so
they lost about 17,200,000,000\. Therefore, after the rational regula-
tions for the cryptocurrency are made, we will be able to use them
efficiently.

Jeong, Woojin (2-10)
ckm001204@naver.com

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