After watching Horizon, a programme on TV  last week about alternate day fasting, called Eat Fast and Live Longer, I have decided to give it a try.

Here is the Horizon programme “Eat, Fast And Live Longer”

The programme was presented by Michael Mosley and he met several dieters and researchers who claim that fasting can actually be good for your health and can help prevent the onset of age related diseases like alzheimer’s, cancer and dementia.

Apparently, calorie restriction in animal tests have revealed that the animals subjected to the restrictions live significantly longer than animals without any restrictions, significantly longer.

Washington University is at the heart of this new science. Professor Luigi Fontana has studied a group of people over the last 10 years who restrict calories every day. Professor Luigi also claims that abdominal fat is particularly bad and can lead to cardiovascular related diseases.

Dr Valtor Longo is the director of the longevity institute in California and is studying ageing. He demonstrated how mice, that have been genetically modified with a low IGF1 growth hormone, live  on average 40% longer than normal mice and are less susceptible to diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular diseases.

When the body is subjected to calorie restriction, the growth hormone IGF1 is lowered and the body starts to repair its own cells and DNA damage is more likely to get fixed.

To lower IGF1, calories and protein must be restricted and one of the best ways to accomplish this is by fasting.

Dr Valtor Longo claims that just a few days of fasting can jolt the body into self repairing cells.

One of the main problems with fasting is that it is an extremely difficult thing to do – it’s not easy to stop eating for a few days.

Cue Dr Krista A Varady from Chicago who is studying ageing and has come up with a way of making fasting more palatable called Alternate Day Fasting.

Alternate day fasting involves restricting calories on alternate days to 400 – 500 calories for women and 500 – 600 calories for men – these days are called “Fast days”. On the days in between fast days you can eat anything that you like.

However caution is needed especially amongst pregnant women and people with medical conditions.

Finally in the TV programme, Professor Mark Mattson from Baltimore, who is a leading expert on the ageing brain, said that intermittent fasting or energy restriction can delay the onset of alzeimers, dementia and memory loss.

He demonstrated that in the brains of fasting mice, new brain cells were actually created.

Michael Mosley opted to replace the alternate day fasting with a 5/2  diet, which is eat anything for 5 days and fast using the low calorie diet of approximately 500 calories for 2 days. The 5/2 diet was recommended by Professor Mark Mattson.

Note – the fasting days should not be consecutive days, but spread apart for example Monday and Wednesday.

So armed with this new information, I intend to give the 5/2 alternate day fasting a try and see how it affects my health and well being.

Reports and diet information to follow.

See the guide below to find out how many calories are in the foods listed – see item packets for more accurate figures.

Day 1 – fast day.

Having well stocked myself up last night with a fish and chip supper, I am going to start the first fast day today.

My thinking is that I would like to last the day as long as possible without any food and when I begin to feel hungry, I will use up some of my 500 calorie daily allowance.

It’s now 14.15 in the afternoon and so far I haven’t eaten anything. I feel quite hungry, so I am going to have a boiled egg and 100 grams of seedless black grapes – total calories 89 + 66 = 155. Please bear in mind that the calorie chart above is only a general indicator – for exact calories see the individual packets of items purchased.

My first lunch on this diet

This small snack has just taken the edge of my hunger and I only have to wait 3.5 hours until my evening meal, when I will have almost 350 calories to play with – bring it on!

One tip here is to invest in some scales similar to the image shown below  – that way you will be able to measure out 100 grams exactly, so that you can keep a tally of your daily calories.

These scales are great for counting the calories

For my evening meal, I opted for grilled mackerel and steamed cabbage and carrots – total calories 272 for the mackerel, 21 for the cabbage and 30 for the carrots giving a grand total of 323 calories.

This takes my total calorie intake for today to 478 calories. I also have had some black tea and a black coffee, so I’m still under the target of 500 calories.

For the first day, I feel ok and the second meal again, just took the edge off the hunger, so I”m fine.

My second meal of the day – mackerel and vege

Day 2 – fast day. I made the mistake of fasting two days consecutively :-), but the fast days should be spread apart ie Tuesday and Thursday.

Felt a bit peckish this morning and couldn’t have really started the day without at least something to eat, so I decided on a boiled egg and cup of green tea – approx 90 calories.

I also had a cup of black coffee with a smidgeon of sugar to keep my caffeine levels up – coming off caffeine as well as calorie restricting would be too much for me.

For lunch I had a tin of plum tomatoes, which I mashed in a pan with a potato masher and added 1 teaspoon of vegetable bouillon and one teaspoon of mixed dried italian herbs – approx 90 calories.

I heated the mixture up and made a sort of tomato soup, which I must admit was really tasty. My energy levels are still good and I have been quite active today. I still have 300 calories left for today, which I intend to use up.

A little thought, which is keeping me going is that tomorrow I can eat what the hell I want for the next 5 days! – I have been conjoring up some delicious ideas in my head.

Home made tomato soup

For my final meal of the 2nd fast day, I opted for a tin of albacore tuna (147 calories) and salad, which comprised of a tomato, spring onions, cress, a little gem lettuce and a good squirt of 70% reduced calorie salad cream. This comes in well below my remaining 300 calories for today, which is great.

I must admit this meal really raised my spirits and I certainly don’t feel hungry or like I’ve been fasting.

All in all, I have found this diet very manageable so far, and the great thing is for the next 5 days there will be no dieting – yea hah!

My final meal of the two day fast – albacore tuna salad

Week 2 – fast day one

Well here we are again for another two days of fasting!

I’ve been doing a bit of research into low calorie foods that make you feel full, however I haven’t put any of them into practice yet.

Generally, I find the first fast day relatively easy until the end of the day, when I start to feel hungry.

I also added some rice cakes to my daily fast day (29 calories each) – these make excellent snacks especially with a cup of tea or coffee.

Rice cakes make an excellent snack

I started my my first fast day with a rice cake and cup of black tea.

For lunch I went for my tried and tested tomato soup, which is quite filling. Apparently soups are renowned by dieters for making you feel full. It’s got something to do with the bulk and volume of them.

For my evening meal I had boiled egg with a tuna salad, similar to the one I did last week – with lashings of low cal salad cream.

Some good low calorie foods to make you feel full are fat free popcorn, apples, sweet potato, fresh green vegetables, peanut butter (teaspoon), soups and beans.

Apples apparently are a great appetite suppressant – the bulky fibre fills up your stomach and turns off the appetite control hormones. Will try this tomorrow by having one for breakfast!

Update 30th August 2012

Things were a bit hectic today, so I couldn’t spend too much time preparing food.

I opted for a boiled egg for breakfast and another one for lunch.

For my evening meal I had a tin of albacore tuna, a small tin of mussels in garlic sauce and some steamed vegetables – carrot, broccoli and green cabbage.

Simple and fast – tuna, mussels and steamed vege

Total calories for today approx 500 calories.

I found the diet today relatively easy – there were a few hunger points just before meal times, but the small meals just took the edge of the pain. It’s reassuring to know that tomorrow is a feed day, so that’s something to look forward to.

Update 23/09/12

It’s been a few weeks now since I started on this diet and to be honest the last couple of weeks, I have only managed one fast day per week due to circumstances beyond my control.

However, even with only one fast day per week, I have noticed an improvement in my weight and general sense of well being. Last week I overdid my fast day and only had one meal of tuna and steamed vegetables, which I won’t be repeating – 300 calories in total for that day!  It’s ok to spread out the 500 calories throughout the day, so tomorrow I will have two boiled eggs for breakfast then some fish and steamed vegetables in the evening.

I also find that on my fast day I get some really good greens into my system – you can eat lots of greens and fresh vegetables because there are virtually no calories them. Obviously potatoes and some other vege can have more calories than others, but generally green vegetables and carrots are low in calories.

Update March 2017

In March this year the rules of the diet were relaxed a little by DR Michael Mosley, who now says that the 600 calories for men and 500 calories for women can be changed to 800 calories. This allows an extra mid-day or mid-afternoon snack, which helps dieters to  get through the day hunger free. However DR Mosley states that the extra calories must not be used for unhealthy snacks such as a burger or crisps. The fast days should only include healthy food.

Having been on this diet for a few years now, I have fine tuned what I eat on fast days to some really tasty and healthy food.

One of my favourite and simple meals is salmon with anchovies, spinach and spicy tomato sauce – see below.

Anchovies, Spinach and Spicy Tomato Sauce Recipe

For the sauce, simply chop some ripe tomatoes into some hot olive olive, add garlic, chilli peppers, salt and pepper to taste. Fry until the tomatoes become soft and use a potato masher to pulverise the tomatoes into a sauce. Add the chopped anchovies to the sauce after about 10 minutes just before serving. Meanwhile steam some spinach or kale or other green vegetable of choice. Grill some salmon or use a George Foreman type grill for about 6 minutes – 3 minutes each side.

Cook the salmon, the sauce and the spinach at the same time then combine all the ingredients and serve. This is a really tasty and satisfying meal and it’s super healthy as well.

Update Oct 2019

Keeping up the one day per week fast and it’s still managing to keep off those extra pounds. One more addition is that on the fast day I am trying out Sunray Fat Burn Formula natural diet pills which contain Glucomannan (Konjac Fibre), a natural appetite suppressant. It helps to keep those hunger pains to a minimum, making it easier to cope with limited calories on the fast day.

Overall if you are looking to lose weight in a healthy way then the alternate day fast program could be the diet for you. Good luck

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Many years ago I stumbled upon trading using technical analysis. It was when computers were just becoming mainstream about 25 years ago. I bought a copy of Metastock and took a few courses on how to read charts and how to interpret indicators and trendlines. In those days, chart data feeds were slow and expensive and computers were prone to crashing at regular intervals.

Twenty five years on, I would like to say that I am living in the Bahamas and have made billions from astute financial decisions. This is not the case however, but I still haven’t given up! Some would say that playing the markets is an addiction and I would agree with them.

These days I prefer to stick with forex markets, or currency markets to the uninitiated. Forex markets trade 24/7 except for Sundays and bank holidays, so they can be traded in the evenings as well as during the day, which is handy if you work.

You don’t need a lot of money to trade forex and to be honest I never have more than a couple of hundred UK pounds in my account at any one time. It’s like playing the most addictive game you’ve ever played. You can trade dummy accounts with no money, but many people advise against this because you will not get the feelings of fear and greed that comes from trading with real money.

Forex is traded in pairs for example GBP/USD, EUR/USD, AUD/USD, USD/JPY and USD/CAD – these are known as the major pairs and are the most traded pairs. GBP = Great Britain Pound, USD = US Dollar, AUD = Australian Dollar, JPY = Japanese Yen, CAD = Canadian Dollar.

There are an infinite amount of influences that can cause a market to move, but ultimately if there are more buyers than sellers a market will move up and if there are more sellers than buyers a market will move down. Financial news items and announcements occur throughout the day. These news items may include financial data, speeches by financial ministers or unexpected general news items. For monitoring the news, websites such as dailyfx.com and forexfactory.com are worth taking a look at. News can move markets in a big way, so it’s worth taking a look at the financial calendars on either of the websites mentioned above. One News event worth making a note of is the Non Farm Payroll, which comes out on the first Friday of every month. The data from the Non Farm Payroll will usually move the forex markets massively, so you may not want to be in the markets when this happens.

Here is a handy tool showing the ratio of buyers and sellers of the main currency pairs.

To start trading forex you will need to open an account with a broker and there are many out there, but the one I have used for years and recommend is ETX Capital in London

ETX charts and indicators are very clear and easy to use and understand. Overall, they have a good reputation.

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Many of you will have heard of Betfair, which has a betting exchange and many of you will have dabbled with finding betting strategies that can make a regular profit. After researching various systems and methods for making a profit, I stumbled upon Total Football Trading, which is a canned selection of trading methods to accomplish such a feat. The reason for choosing a football betting strategy over other sports is that football provides one of the most liquid markets on the Betfair exchange. Liquid means that there is more money staked on football games than other sports in the exchange, which makes it easier to exit your trades and also trade with higher stakes.

After parting with your money and purchasing Total Football Trading, you will get some emails with links and passwords to a website where you can view the methods advertised.

One of the systems covered, and was the reason I purchased Total Football Trading, was the LTD reloaded method, which to be honest, I wouldn’t have thought of in a thousand years. “LTD” stands for “lay the draw” and it applies to football games. In my opinion this system alone is worth the cash outlay and if followed correctly will definitely yield some good results.

There are ten strategies in total, which at the time of writing this review, I have not had a chance of looking at all of them yet, but will update this post once I get the chance.

One of the first sections of Total Football Trading includes good tutorials on exiting trades (greening up), the importance of a trading plan, how to be a professional football trader, getting the correct mentality, keeping records, the times you should never trade, staking plans and more. There is also an interesting section on lifestyle and how to manage your trading – this is often an overlooked subject in my opinion, and includes tips on how to stay sharp and make the right decisions.

Personally, I only trade Betfair for fun with small amounts of money that I can afford to lose, but for the more adventurous, the Total Football Trading package would definitely be a good starting place to accumulate the knowledge necessary to become a full time professional trader.

One more thing to mention is that there are eight trading videos with the package, which illustrate real life trading so that you can get a good idea of how the pros trade. Some of the trading videos use the systems that are included with the package. These videos are invaluable to the budding football trader and give a much clearer example of how to trade.

You can get access to Total Football Trading here

Update

I have been getting familiar with the main 10 systems for 2 days now and have made some profits. There is a lot to digest amongst the 10 main strategies. You can usually apply at least 2 or 3 strategies to each game followed, however I recommend that you stick to 2 strategies at a time otherwise you may find it difficult to keep on top of them.

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There are many ways to make money online, but one of the better known ways is with affiliate marketing.

So what exactly is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is promoting someone’s product, service or company and getting paid commission on a sale.

How does this work?

The affiliate marketer places an ad or link on their website to advertise the product, service or company, and if someone places an order the advertiser receives a commission. A lot of companies advertise their affiliate products on affiliate networks like Commission Junction and Share A Sale.

What do I need to get started?

First of all you will need a website – most affiliate programs will not accept new affiliates without one. A simple WordPress blog should suffice in most cases.

It is also best to focus on a particular niche – preferable one that you have a genuine interest in, because you maybe spending a lot of time writing articles in your chosen niche and you have more chance of succeeding if you’re writing about something that you have a genuine interest.

To find out more about affiliate marketing there is a very good guide written by Nick Reese called Traffic and Trust, which is currently selling at $97.

$97 sounds like a lot of money, but believe me you can spend a lot of money learning about affiliate marketing and end up spending money on products that will get you nowhere.

Traffic and Trust is a very clear and concise guide on how to go start affiliate marketing. It also gives advice on creating a brand, content development, site promotion and there is a handy step by step planning guide at the end to get your affiliate marketing  plan up and running.

This book is good for beginners, but is also good for experienced affiliate marketers – there is some really good advice in the book and I would definately not recommend it otherwise.

At the end of the book there is a very good list of resources with links to some of the best known affiliate resources available on the internet – resources that will help with building your website, branding identity, analytics tools, affiliate networks, keyword analysis, search engine optimization, WordPress plugins, cloaking affiliate links and much more.

There are some really good videos as well on how to install some of the plugins mentioned in the book such as how to make a sitemap and submit it to Google Webmaster Tools and how to set up your robot.txt file.

You can buy Traffic and Trust here

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A simple way of redirecting an URL to another URL is to use what is known as a PHP jump script.

Affiliate marketers often use PHP jump scripts or other redirection methods to so that their affiliate link remains hidden. Depending on the affiliate network however, this does not always disguise the affiliate link in the URL address bar.

This source code has been taken from Steve Dawson’s website at www.stevedawson.com.

The method is quite simple – first copy and save the script below as Jump.php and upload it to your website’s root folder. The root folder is usually public_html

To add or change affiliate links, simply modify the text in $m == “Just Phones” ie change “Just Phones” to another keyword or reference word.

Then change $link = “put your affiliate link in here”

Then add the link URL to your site using

<a rel=”nofollow” href=”jump.php?m=XXXXXX”>Anchor Text</a>

Change the XXXXXX for the text you entered in the $m == ie in this example – Just Phones

<?PHP // This script is to be used with the Affiliate Jump Tutorial at www.stevedawson.com/articles.php
/************************************************************************/
/* PHP Affiliate Jump Script */
/* =========================== */
/* */
/* Written by Steve Dawson – http://www.stevedawson.com */
/* Freelance Web Developer – PHP, MySQL, HTML programming */
/* */
/* This program is free software. You can redistribute it and/or modify */
/* but please leave this header intact, thanks */
/************************************************************************/
/*
Save this page as jump.php and when linking to this script use the following:
<a rel=”nofollow” href=”jump.php?m=XXXXXX”>anchor text</a>
Where XXXXXX is your merchant.
*/
$m = $_GET[‘m’];
if ($m == “”) {$link = “http://www.stevedawson.com/mobiles/”;} // Default Blank
if ($m == “Just Phones”) {$link = “http://www.awin1.com/awclick.php?mid=97&id=38362”;}
if ($m == “UKPhoneShop”) {$link = “http://tracker.tradedoubler.com/click?p=985&a=949731&g=5119”;}
/*
To add more jump links, just copy and paste one of
the lines above and modify the $m and $link values
*/
header(“Location: $link”); // Jump to the hiddden affiliate URL above
exit();
?>

If your blog is a wordpress blog, you can simply use a plugin such as Eclipse Link Cloaker or Pretty Link Pro

These plugins will do all the heavy lifting for you and you can configure them how you like.

For example Eclipse Link Cloaker will allow you to select from different types of redirects such as:

301 Permanent Redirect
302 (Default)
307 Temporary Redirect
Double META refresh (Hides the referrer)
Shows the target in a frame. (Cloaks the address bar)

One of my favourite features of Eclipse Link Cloaker is that you can have affiliate links or links to outside sites redirected automatically, but internal links on your site will be left alone by adding your site name to a list of exclusions.

There are also options for adding rel=nofollow to external links to prevent search engines from following them.

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After visiting relatives and friends in Stockport, I was surprised by how many of my friends have converted from smoking cigarettes to the revolutionary new e-cigarette.

There are approximately 10 million smokers in the UK, of which approximately 1.3 million have now switched over to the new electronic cigarettes – at the time of this post.

E-cigarettes deliver a similar amount of nicotine to conventional cigarettes, but without the known harmful effects of tar and smoke. This is achieved by the vaporization of the nicotine as the smoker draws in air through a chamber – similar to smoking a conventional cigarette.
However many countries are now in the process of imposing legislation on e-cigarettes and intend to classify them as medicines. In the UK, e-cigarettes are to be classified as medicines from 2016.

Some countries such as Brazil, Norway and Singapore have completely banned e-cigarettes. Interestingly, it is normal in Norway and Sweden to buy purified tobacco in small bags similar to teabags, which are inserted between the gums and lips. These bags are called Snus and release a similar dose of nicotine to conventional cigarettes. Sweden also has one of the lowest rate of tobacco related diseases.
Snus is banned in most European countries.

Should tobacco companies be worried about e-cigarettes?
Many analysts think so, and two of the worlds largest tobacco companies, BAT and Imperial Tobacco have been downgraded by some business analysts from buy recommendations. The e-cigarette market is expected to grow from $2 billion to $3 billion in 2013.

One of the most popular e-cigarette brands on the UK market are called E-Lites.
E-Lites cost approximately £1.50 for 20 cigarettes compared with approximately £8 per pack of 20 Benson and Hedges cigarettes.

Another benefit of e-cigarettes is that many pubs and restaurants allow the smoking of them indoors – especially beneficial to UK smokers, who currently have to stand outside in our notoriously bad English weather.

Being an ex smoker, I asked one of my friends if I could try their e-cigarette and I have to say they are extremely close to the real thing not only in their operation, but also in the nicotine effect – I felt high as a kite for over half an hour.

You can buy E-Lite cigarettes directly from their website here

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This is a fairly obvious statement for many web entrepreneur veterans, but for the newby to the world of online business and marketing read on…

SEO or search engine optimization, is the art of making your web content appear in the search engine results – so that your content is found by your target audience.

It’s not just a matter of making your content appear in the search engine results for a particular keyword or phrase, but to get more traffic and sales, you need to make your content appear close to the top of the search results, and ideally to get your content to the top of the first page of search results.

Let’s take an example…

Mr and Mrs Smith own a fish restaurant in Skegness and wish to attract more customers to their shop via the web. They put together a simple website and publish it online, however without SEO knowledge they don’t get any visitors to their website – it is simply not found by potential customers.

Having gained some SEO knowledge, Mr and Mrs Smith start to publish some articles on how they source their fish from local suppliers. They also get some links from the local supplier’s website to their website, which directs some traffic to their website. Their articles are picked up by search engines and start to rank for certain keywords such as “fish and chips in Skegness”

Users searching the internet for “fish and chips in Skegness” find Mr and Mrs Smith’s website from the search engine results and visit the shop. They then tell their friends and send them a link to the website.

Search engine optimization isn’t rocket science and once learned can actually save you money.

A lot of web entrepreneurs start off on the wrong foot to get their websites noticed and pay for cheap short cuts or thousands of links. This may bring short term benefits, but will probably get your site demoted from search results over a period of time. The best way to build up your web business is by acquiring natural links and publishing outstanding content relevant to your business.

Pay per click advertising is also another way of promoting your business, but it can work out very expensive.

If you’d like to become an SEO master then Aaron Wall has a website called SEOBook. Here you can learn all the latest techniques and methods to grow your online business. Aaron is deemed to be one of the worlds leading experts on SEO and his website is highly recommended.

You can see SEOBook here

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It could be so much more. It boasts some of the most interesting topography in the county. It sits at the confluence of the rivers Tame and Goyt, from where the mighty Mersey begins its journey to the sea. It is steeped in the rich history of the Industrial Revolution. Its transport links are second to none – both the M60 motorway and West Coast mainline pass right through the heart of the town – yet for Stockport, something has gone dreadfully wrong.

What must first time visitors think as they approach town – looking down from the viaduct on the wasteland of Merseyway, glancing the shabby rear ends of the Princes Street shop buildings from the motorway, or walking through the desolate remains of the former Grand Central site?

There is presently a Facebook page doing the rounds, a collection of photos depicting Stockport in bygone times. It’s heartbreaking to compare the bustling, lively town of the seventies and eighties with a walk through the centre today. Of all the old stores, only Marks and Spencer remains, pluckily standing its ground against a rising tide of identikit retail outlets. Pound shops abound, as do gaming establishments and charity shops. The two main shopping streets look awful; careworn and unappealing. Of course, Stockport can’t be blamed for the ill economic wind that has blown through the high street in general, but that shouldn’t be an excuse to give up.

Reasons for the collapse of the high street are many and have been debated endlessly: the rise of the internet, out-of-town shopping, changes in lifestyle etc. but where is Stockport’s fight back? Why has it just accepted its fate and laid quietly down to die? Where is the diversification? Why are new shops not rising up in place of the old? Where are the smart, and just as importantly, safe restaurants and bars that would kickstart the night-time economy so lacking in the town?

It is difficult to pinpoint exactly when the rot began to set in but the situation is now critical. Merseyway, as it stands, is dead. Whether or not a phoenix can rise from its ashes remains to be seen. What Stockport needs is radical. Successive councils have tinkered around the edge of the problem for at least the last fifteen years. They have all failed the town.

With the clarity of hindsight, covering the river was a terrible mistake. The Mersey is now a clean, living waterway but the council has failed to exploit this. There are still riverside tracts of land but they have been completely neglected. The walkways are carpeted with litter and broken glass. Other towns manage to make a feature of their rivers; why not here?

It’s easy to knock Stockport, to pour scorn on its efforts while passing it by on the way to Manchester or the Trafford Centre but does it really need to be this way? With foresight and investment Stockport town centre could succeed once again. It could be so much more.

Osprey the new novel from Matthew Corrigan is out now as an ebook on Amazon here

www.ospreyskypower.com

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In case you’ve not heard, Bitcoin or BTC for short, is a virtual currency that was created by a Japanese computer expert with a pseudonym name Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008.

However, there is a lot of mystery surrounding this guy and there are even rumours that bitcoin may have been created by a large corporation like Samsung, Toshiba, Nakamichi, Motorola or even a team at Google.

Bitcoin’s popularity has increased significantly over the last few months, especially after the collapse of some of Cyprus’s banks.

One of the main problems with creating a digital currency is a problem called double spending – stopping somebody from spending a chunk of text over and over again? To get around this problem, Bitcoin uses what is known as a blockchain, where users dedicate some of their CPU power to running a piece of software and get rewarded with bitcoins.

Transactions are validated by bitcoin users’ computers solving cryptographic puzzles and the first computer to solve the puzzle receives 50 new bitcoins. Bitcoins are stored in wallets that can be stored locally on a computer or virtually at somewhere like MTGox – this is considered to one of the safest bitcoin companies.

Apparently, it is extremely difficult for one computer to solve these puzzles, so would be bitcoin miners create networks of computers to solve them.

Bitcoins are not mined singularly but in blocks of 50.

Since March 2013 the price of a single bitcoin rose from $40 to $260 before crashing down to $80 in the last 3 days.

There will never be more than 21 million coins created and if adopted as a world currency each coin is projected to be worth approximately $3,571,426 – they are currently worth about $140, so could be a great investment.

Update

In February 2014, MtGox, one of the largest Bitcoin exchanges folded due to a bug in their system software. This could possibly be a fatal blow to the future of Bitcoin and the value of one Bitcoin dropped from over $1100 to around $500.

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