Bitcoin：Alternative Currency Or Investment Opportunity?

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the concepts underlying the virtual currencies’ schemes and their past development, in order to understand where their future development is tending. Based on the theories and on the analysis of the data related to the Bitcoin case study, will be reached a common judgment over the future of virtual currency.Bitcoin being by far the most traded and valued virtual currency can surely grant a solid perspective over the entire virtual currency’s world, without neglecting the possibility of a failure or the emerging of a new crypto-currency that could eclipse the Bitcoin popularity. Bitcoin in the last year has received an amount of investment that has overcome the ones of the most important technological innovations of the last 50 years such as the computer and the Internet have receive in their early development. Does this mean anything? Does Bitcoin have the technology, the power and the structural predisposition to become a revolutionary widespread innovation on the same level of the computer and the Internet? Many governmental and financial authorities started already to study and find different applications for the block chain system, at the basis of the Bitcoin structure:is just this the revolutionary idea or virtual currencies have a florid future in the years to come?The objective is to define some possible scenarios for the future of virtual currencies and to evaluate which one could be the most probable. Conclusions will be made about the future of the virtual currencies on the basis of the data, collected and analyzed, and the study of the peculiarities in relation with real currencies.