Bitcoins becoming mainstream and why it’s important to protect them from hackers

Bitcoins is and most likely will always be the biggest mystery to hit the internet, for those of you who haven’t really heard of bitcoins or have absolutely no idea what I’m actually talking about here is a quick history lesson.

In 2009 bitcoins came into existence when it was first initially released, in fact, bitcoins were described with the words “a system for electronic transactions without relying on trust”. Why are Bitcoins such a mystery? Well because no one actually knows who created them, there is a name attached “Satoshi Nakamoto“, the only way that name is even remotely attached to bitcoins is because there was a post titled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System“ which had the name as the author, In reality that’s just a name of an unknown person, the best information anyone has on Nakamoto is that he is a man living in Japan who was born on born on 5 April 1975, which was also claimed by the man himself, that narrows it down, right?

The growth of bitcoins expanded very quickly, bitcoins are believed to be more “valuable” than any other dollar in the world, people also say they’re untraceable and that the FBI doesn’t have enough prays to find out who is who, as always the FBI think otherwise.

Ever heard that we only see 4% of the networked web pages? No, whoever told you that isn’t full of it, it’s actually true, the other 96% is what people call “Dark Web” or “Deep Web“, this is where people use bitcoins more often than most, primarily for the purchase of illegal goods. The deep web is somewhere a person can literally get anything they desire, trust me I literally mean anything, well for the right price of course.

I bet the question you’re wondering now is the value of bitcoins, the short answer to that is a lot. When bitcoins were first released, a guy named “Koch” purchased 5,000 bitcoins for a total of $27 but now those 5,000 bitcoins that cost Koch less then $30 is now worth $886,000, the best part about this story is he actually forgot he had them, doing the math it would mean for one Bitcoin you would be paying at least $177.40 roughly.

With the value of Bitcoins being so high, they’ve also become a primary target for hackers, the worst part, it’s already happening, not only is it happening professionals believe if you have the knowledge to create an iTunes account then you should have enough knowledge to get a ransomware toolkit, that’s how simple it actually is, in the most recent cases “Wannacry Ransomware” was the cause of attacks, essentially what they do is lock peoples important files and demand ransom for the safe unlocking of said files, many computers around the world have been hit by this and all the victim receives is a little ransom message saying “if you want to see your computer files again, pay us $300 (£230) inside the next 72 hours and we’ll unlock them for you, no questions asked“. Don’t think this won’t happen to you, railways in Australia have already been targets of this new online criminal activity.

But how can we stop this and protect our precious bitcoins? Firstly, don’t make the mistake these past victims have, make sure your computer security patches are up to date, then you need to make sure your bitcoin wallet is also secure. Always do Bitcoin transactions on your own computer, never keep your wallet address and its private key in the same location, always use a VPN, always use strong passwords and lastly consider using a Bitcoin wallet encryption.

Bitcoins are only growing and they will continue to grow, Bitcoins themselves aren’t illegal so if you decide to board the Bitcoin train, just keep it all legal and you’ll be fine, who knows maybe you might end up with the next multi million dollar stockpile.