What is Bitcoin and what it is all about?
Bitcoin is a type of digital currency in which encryption techniques are used to regulate the generation of units and verify the transfer of funds. This simply means that nobody, not even the person who created it, can independently create new units. What's more, there's no central authority like a bank or government that controls these transactions. Bitcoins are traded among people, and these transactions take place directly between two people (peer-to-peer) worldwide for free or at extremely low cost.
There are many critics who say bitcoin will become worthless because it has no physical backing – unlike gold – and requires huge amounts of electricity to generate enough bitcoins for circulation.