There are essentially two ways to own Bitcoins, three if you consider earn.com and earn-bitcoins.com as sustainable resources to get Bitcoins.
These sites let you earn money by completing mundane tasks, such as replying to emails, taking surveys, getting tipped by the community, etc. However, a substantial return from this activity is highly subjective and might I say, very doubtful.
So let’s move on with the remaining two i.e. Mining and Investing.
Mining:
Bitcoin works on a decentralised network and can be mined by anyone who holds any amount of bitcoins.
Bitcoin miners are the people who verify a transaction happening on the blockchain in return for a transaction fee that they are awarded for solving that specific problem.
This problem is a complex mathematical function, whose solution is always lesser than 256 bits, hence it is called SHA 256 hash function.
The nodes connected to the bitcoin blockchain are all potential candidates to mine bitcoin, however, specific hardwares which contain high-performing GPUs or ASICs from mining giants such as Bitmain and Nvidia are usually preferred among the miners due to significant yields.
Bitcoin mining requires time, electricity and most importantly large investments, which is not a very viable prospect for an individual investor citing irregular or very low yield against a very high cost of operation.
Hence, people generally root for pooled mining where everybody in the pool gets a proportionate share of the transaction fee for the amount of work they have contributed to verify that transaction.
And, above all, the mining difficulty tends to go up as more and more miner joins in, this is to keep the Bitcoin influx always in a steady motion.
The blockchain adds another block to complete the transaction and allocate the person his/her fair share of transaction fee for solving the hash function.
When the solution is found, it is shared by every other node on that network and is propagated along the way. This block contains proof-of-work details, which is to ensure that the finding of a new block was time and money consuming.
(For details about proof-of-work, visit
https://www.bitcoinmining.com/)
The block creation rate is balanced out by recalculating the mining difficulty after every 2016 blocks. This is the reason why bitcoin mining difficulty rises exponentially as the bitcoins are now more popular than any other cryptocurrencies, hence there are more miners than ever before.
With more ASICs and GPUs in place, the average mining time decreases, and to compensate all that, the mining difficulty shoots up, which helps the mining time and the rate of creation of a block, return to normal.
There are several sites which mine bitcoins on a user's behalf against a nominal cost when compared to the hefty individual expenditure otherwise. In such scenarios, users are required to pay a certain amount to the company for the management of hardware, software, bandwidth, electricity, etc that are required for mining.
To narrow down the whole phenomenon, unless you are willing to pay for avant-garde mining instruments, Bitcoin mining is a no go.
Now, it all comes down to
Investing:
If you are looking to invest, say $5000 in Bitcoins, then first consider this major aspect, irrespective of how many times it has been reiterated by everybody else
*THIS IS A HUGE AMOUNT*
Most crypto enthusiasts believe or say that cryptocurrency is a highly volatile domain, hence, $5000 don’t make much sense.
Without being disrespectful to anybody’s sincere outlook, this a significant amount (if not much) for the general audience, who are looking to start fresh in this field, in terms of investment portfolio, allegiance, or, vested interests.
This can be achieved with the help of fiat-crypto exchanges (if you have fiat only assets), or crypto-only exchanges (if you already hold cryptocurrencies).
So, to answer your question, I would suggest you to conduct a thorough research about latest ICOs, established and new cryptocurrencies, and even prior to that, ask yourself, do you believe in the vision of crypto especially Bitcoins, or are you looking for a quick fix only!
As, one’s fall can be other’s lift or vice versa or maybe both can fall and swell together depending on market interests.
If you are more or less inclined towards just a quick fix, then my friend, you are not taking enough risks to even consider the term investment for your one-time frenzy, otherwise, you can invest your hard earned money in any of the below cryptocurrencies and tokens such as Bitcoin, Ripple, Ethereum, BNB, BEX, etc. as the market has just suffered a huge crash, and the inevitable surge is believed to be just right around the corner.
