Bitcoin. To the moon? Sure, but what the heck is that. I remember the day when I first heard of this new, controversial technology. It was sometime in 2010, one early evening in my New York City apartment when I stumbled upon the mythical Satoshi Nakamoto and this new peer-to-peer version of electronic cash. It was not long before I read and learned the basics of how it works and soon found myself "mining" my first coins on a website. While 2010 was very early in Bitcoin's life, cpu mining had already gone the way of the dinosaurs, and my interest quickly waned. That said, I was intrigued from the beginning. It had potential. Maybe something big. Unfortunately, other things in life eventually won over my interest, and I quickly moved on from the cryptocurrency world.

Fast forward to today. Bitcoin has gone on a wild ride. From virtually being worthless, one bitcoin had risen as high as $1200 down to around $350 and now back up to around $500-600 range. In the beginning, it was basically impossible to spend a bitcoin. Traders would buy and sell them speculating on its future value (this still happens today). Early adopters were mostly crypto fans, experts and those that were truly behind the technology and its potential. Today, much of that still remains the same. However, now there exists places that will happily accept bicoins as payment - to name a few, Overstock.com, TigerDirect.com, dish.com, and even Tesla Motors.

The more I read and think about it, Bitcoin does a truly remarkable thing and it does it in a clever (and awesome) way. Simply put, it solves the problem of "double spending", so that I cannot use the same "money" to buy item x and then also item y. And it does this WITHOUT the need for a central authority like a bank (that ensures you actually have the money to spend). Again without going into detail, it solves this by relying on the power of the community, allowing anyone willing to contribute their computing/processing power to verifying these transactions. I am most fascinated by the technological achievements in Bitcoin; many believe there are benefits on a social level with reducing government/bank authority. One incredible benefit comes in the reduced cost AND time in sending money across the world. A world in which you can electronically transfer buying power across the globe almost immediately and with close to zero fees is a remarkable improvement from the Western Union wire fund world we live in today.

All said, just try it. Even though the value of 1 bitcoin is currently around $600, you can purchase fractions and buy as little as 10 or 20 dollars worth. I highly recommend and trust Coinbase, the biggest US vendor for buying and selling bitcoin.