Bitcoin Vs Forex: Understanding the Differences or Benefits and which is better?

    A broad spectrum of individuals actively engages both the Forex and Cryptocurrency markets are pursuit of opportunity. The simultaneous buying and selling of the same negotiable financial instruments or commodities in different markets in order to make an immediate profit without risk, short-term trading strategies and long-term investment plans may be executed in both. However, offering its own unique advantages and disadvantages to aspiring participates.

History of Forex  and  Bitcoin 

    The exchange of foreign currencies has been a pastime of traders since the widespread adoption of the gold standard during the last 19th century. Determining a currency's worth in relation to gold established a standardised manner of valuation. In time, hedgers and speculators alike were able to swap currencies in an attempt to realise profit or preserve wealth.
    A technology evolved, the global currency trade transitioned from the physical transfer of money to an electronic one. By the turn of the 21st century, international currency exchange revolved around the newly digitised over the counter  the Forex marketplace.

   In 2009, an anonymous computer programmer under the alias Satoshi Makamoto invented a revolutionary digital form of money know as the Bitcoin (BTC).(1) Retrieved 1 October 2017 BTC quickly became the standard for a budding asset class of Internet based modes of payment labelled "cryptocurrencies" As BTC become more accepted by consumers, its popularity grew in trading circles. the Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have been touted as the future of money.

Market Capitalisation David Vs Goliath

    Before deciding to trade BTC or  the Forex pairs, it is important or understand the context in size of each market. The larger the market, the greater liquidity, depth and stability. This is certainly true in the case of BTC and  the Forex.

    The Forex is the largest marketplace in the world. All Participants from around the globe engage the Forex remotely on a daily basis, ensuring liquidity and relative pricing stability. Rapidly advancing Internet technologies have promoted robust growth of the Forex for the last 21 years.

   The degree of the Forex expansion is evident when examining traded volumes. Average daily turnover exploded from just over US$ 1 trillion in 1998 to US$ 5 trillion in 2016. (2) Retrieved 1 October 2017. The dominant portion of this volume is readily attributable to the public interest facing the seven major global currencies.

    Each currency in the following list is involved in the corresponding percentage of the US$ 5 trillion in aggregate daily the Forex turnover (3) Retrieved 3 October 2017.

Currency                 Percentage of Daily Volume

United States (Dollar)--------89% 

Euro----------------------------------31% 

Japanese Yen-------------------22%

British pound--------------------10%

Australian dollar----------------7% 
Canadian dollar-----------------5% 
Swiss franc-----------------------5%

    Equally, BTC are traded on a much smaller scale and represent only a portion of the total cryptocurrency marketplace. With a limited supply predetermined to be a maximum of 21 million(4).Retrieved 1 October 2017. BTC is a minuscule included by the Forex. BTC has prove desirable to investors, in terms of value. For the year of 2017, BTC rose to more than US$4,000 apiece, with a total market cap valued at over US$ 70 billion.(5)Retrieved 3 October 2017.

    Regular people have had access to financial instruments to trade since the 1990s, and thereby giving them some control of their own financial future. Instead of trying to safer or more accessible, pick one over the other and trying to find out which is better, we recommend finding the best fit for your lifestyle, your goals and the future you wish to build. That trading was reserved almost solely and specifically for the regular stock markets – this is not the case anymore.

     There are limitless amounts of things to access: futures, options, normal equity markets, the Forex and cryptocurrencies (the Bitcoin). All over the world we now have access to instruments that were only able to be touched by the financial elites. 

    As a derivative to trade When the Forex was introduced, it was met with a lot of resistance. Experts, looking out for everyone’s own good, said that the public should not trade the Forex. ‘’It’s rigged’’,‘’It’s a scam’’.  It’s over leveraged ‘and more. In fact, we can still hear or read stories about how the Forex is not a safe trading vehicle or medium and a scam (most of those complaints are regarding shady and unscrupulous brokers). $5.3 trillion dollars in the Forex traded daily is not a scam. The newest instrument or method is to trade, and perhaps the most confusing to understand and comprehend, is the Bitcoin.

    If financial markets and human behaviour are examples of how natural patterns repeat themselves over time, then the criticisms of the Bitcoin compared to the Forex are another fantastic example.

    If you are a trader, then you might laugh at how much we hear the same criticisms of the Forex when it became mainstream as we do for the Bitcoin. And what are those criticisms? It’s too new, it’s unsafe, it’s a scam, it’s rigged. But we know that not to be true.

    The Forex and the Bitcoin are probably the most closely related trading vessels we have access to. They are both ‘new’. But is one better than the other? Is one safer than the other? Is one better to trade than the other? Let’s look.Can you tell which one is a  the  Forex pair or  the Bitcoin? You can’t. If we put on a price scale you could tell, but with just naked candlesticks we can see that there is absolutely no difference to each other.

    Even in this time , we can observe the same patterns that are inherent in any market. If you’re curious  to which is the Forex pair and which is the Bitcoin, Common indicators like moving averages, volume,  oscillators, volatility indicators work as well in the Forex as they do for trading the Bitcoin and various pairs of its.

    A trader Jesse Liver more was during the famous stock market crashes of 1907 and 1929 – he was quite correct when he said, “There is nothing new on Wall Street or in stock speculation. What has happened will happen again and again and again. This is because human nature does not change, and it is human emotion, solidly built into human nature, that always gets in the way of human intelligence. Of this I am sure.”

    Another and probably more important attribute from a purely idealistic standpoint is that both the Forex and the Bitcoin are not tied to an ‘official’ exchange. If you trade stocks, you have to go through the ASX, NYSE, DAX, etc.

    Do you want to trade futures? You go through to the CBOT, CME, etc. The ‘privilege’ of trading these instruments is that you need significant capital to open an account and maintain that initial capital balance. Want to trade the ES (S&P E-mini futures contract)? You better make sure you have more than the minimum of $5,000 in your account. You go below $5,000 in your account, no more trading futures for you!Trading in the Forex and the Bitcoin generally have little requirement to start trading and opening an account (exchanges for the Bitcoin).

How are they different to others?

    If  the Bitcoin and the Forex can be traded the same way with many of the same common strategies and indicators, what is different about them beyond the technical aspects of trading? Let’s look at some of these differences are listed below.

Trading times:-

   The  Forex and  the Bitcoin are both the most accessible and open markets in the world.  The  Forex trades from Sunday 1600 CST (Central Standard Time) through Friday 1600 CST. Saturday is the only day with no the Forex trading! The Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general are different. They are open all the time.

Volatility:-

     Both the Forex and the Bitcoin pairs offer significant volatility. Volatility is great! It’s how traders make money! However, the Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are naturally going to have more volatility due to the nature of its infancy as a trad-able instrument. Another reason for the higher volatility in cryptocurrencies is the increased attention it is receiving form sovereign nations. Any little tweet or news blip about the Bitcoin is going to send them into a whipsaw.

    The Forex and many of the platforms to trade the Forex on have established and Pretested news events that are readily available to the public. The Bitcoin is still developing and growing, we may very well see the same economic calendars in cryptocurrencies as we do in the Forex. And we are still learning what is going to be the most important fundamental and news based information for this very new trading vehicle. But this is no different than the Forex.

Safety and integrity of It.

     It took a long time for the Forex to become a respected and safe environment for trading. Are there still shady brokers out there? Yes. But the information for the consumer to find reputable and honest the Forex brokers is everywhere. You are only limited by your own research in finding a reputable and safe broker , the free market is very good at eliminating bad players.

    The same can be said for the exchanges and wallets for the Bitcoin. It’s easier today for an unwelcome news story to spread about wallets being raided in the Bitcoins than it was for illegal the Forex brokers in the early 2000s. The pace and speed at which news travels for traders now mostly exacerbates the issue. Has there been theft? 

      Yes. But we are now in a place in the Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies where bad players mostly don’t dare enter and good players in the exchanges and wallets have every incentive to provide the best customer service possible. The longer exchange and wallet stick around, the more their reputation and integrity will last at the row. There are always going to be risks in online trading, but you get to be the deciding factor in where you put your money and how much you are going to risk. And for bad or good, many more nations’ regulatory agencies are keeping their eye on the cryptocurrency markets.

       Thankfully their intervention has been limited to the safety of trader’s deposits and going after the bad players. As time goes on, we can expect to see more oversight and protections like the Forex.

So which is better?

     This is a question there is no easy or definite answer. The Forex is more established and maybe easier to understand to initially open an account where  the Bitcoin is newer and requires a little more searching. Which is safer? Each trader assumes own risk. Which is better to trade? They both present great opportunities to trade. Before the Bitcoin came along, the Forex was the only truly pure traders market. 

    Futures are traded,Sure, but there is so much hedging and actual contract exchanges that happen. And it’s just not that accessible for everyone.  the Forex is a traders paradise. The Forex is often called, ‘The Last Free Market’.

   But theForex could now be joined by the Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies and be considered, “The Last Free Markets”. The Bitcoin is not beholden to any single nation, no single central bank or multinational compact.  The Bitcoin is the only trading instrument where the actual supply is bought and sold is not verified by a single exchange or collection of large banks.

    Instead (and more effectively and honestly)  the Bitcoin’s integrity is verified by the millions of traders who all have the same ledger that is updated in real time – any attempt to hack or alter is impossible because verification is done by the masses.