Nowadays Bitcoin is almost everywhere. For example, China has about 50% of all Bitcoin accounts. In the USA Bitcoin is a subject of 2 hearings in the Senate. Silicon Valley bets on Bitcoin success, and Ben Bernanke said that unregulated digital currency is very promising.
Recently people were considering Bitcoin as something designed only for nerds and crypto-geeks. However most of individuals have never heard about Bitcoin. This is true and thing were going like this until Bitcoin's value has reached $200 in April 2013.
Although now there's more information available about Bitcoin, it doesn't mean that everything written is the truth. Here we would list 3 biggest deceptions about Bitcoin, which is already the world's most known virtual currency.
1. Bitcoin is a virtual money created for criminals
Bitcoin caught people's eye in 2011. These days it was an "official" money used to buy goods on Silk Road - an on-line market for narcotic drugs, weapons, fake IDs etc. This October the Federal Bureau of Investigation closed Silk Road and arrested its owner, Ross William Ulbricht. The value of Bitcoin dropped, then increased and now it has achieved high results. Anyway, media is still trying to bind Bitcoin to Silk Road in every report.
However, everyone should know that the number of legal Bitcoin firms is growing. In April and June this year investors funded $12 million to Bitcoin startups and it seems that donations will not be limited by this.
Even the federals recently said that criminals use all types of financing facilities to launder money, thus it is not just a privilege of Bitcoin.
2. Bitcoin transactions are anonymous and untraceable
From the very beginning Bitcoin provided confidentiality and anonymity due to nonnecessarity to use personal data to make a transaction in Bitcoin. Actually, it is not true because every Bitcoin transaction or transfer is recorded in so-called public blockchains. This prevents an option to spend the same bitcoins two times.
It is possible but very difficult to trace back these transactions for average user, however the USA law gives the federals an option to identify users and reveal their identity by inviting them to the court.
Also the fact that every exchanges' user has to verify their identities makes it impossible to convert illegally gained money into cash without being caught.
3. Mt. Gox is the best place for trading Bitcoin
For a very long time the exchange Mt. Gox was the best Bitcoin trading platform. Unfortunately, many observers and reporters wrongly called the value of Mt. Gox the value of Bitcoin and thus in some months the price of the Mt. Gox was artificially increased.
How could it happen? Simply, it was connected with the impossibility to withdraw Americans' money from Mt. Gox. Users were not able to withdraw dollars, thus they were forced to buy new Bitcoins and exchange them somewhere else. This way the value of exchanger was artificially inflated.