First of all, there's no such thing as bitcoin investing. It's always going to be speculation. I heap digital coinage with a bunch of other things that can't work, but persist. The way bumble bees don't have the aerodynamics for flight, but still manage to defy gravity.

The purpose of bitcoin is nefarious: to undermine central bank "monopolies" on currency production. Or maybe to undermine current payment systems like paypal or credit card. Or maybe to make a boatload of money for the initial creators. Pick one, each has its share of truth, and nothing about it is pretty.

There are a few things that it isn't. The first is a reliable currency. The idea underpinning e-coins is that solving a very complicated algorithm can be considered "value". The bitcoin algorithm can produce a large number of unique solutions. Because a great deal of computer power is required to develop each solution, and because each solution is a very long, unique number, it can be thought of in the same way we think of gold or silver...something which is very, very hard to obtain and to which we ascribe value (yes, ascribe, gold and silver have no more intrinsic worth than paper.)

The amount of computing power required to mine each bitcoin increases as more coins are mined. In fact, this activity now requires so much computer power that it consumes enormous amounts of electricity. The last estimate I saw was that 100 terrawatts of electricity is consumed annually in bitcoin mining, contributing more to global warming than several whole countries.

Finally, the number of bitcoin is mathematically limited to 21 million.If you think of this as money, its buying power increases over time, because demand grows and supply is constrained. So as a currency, it's deflationary by design. Not only deflationary, but exponentially more deflationary as the cost of mining increases. Deflation works well for savers: the longer you hold the currency, the more it will be worth. But only someone desperate or extremely stupid would actually spend bitcoin, because it will rapidly gain value as long as more rubes show up to participate. You can't think of this as money, because you really can't afford to spend it. The original creator, who has wisely remained anonymous, made billions. Why this wasn't immediately shut down as the Ponzi scheme that it is, I don't know.

So where do you keep a bitcoin? You store it in an account called a "wallet", which is kept anonymous and private by the use of advanced encryption technology. The other part of this is blockchain, which is a completely separate concept. Blockchain is a sort of data base which is used to maintain a public ledger used to record all wallets and coins. It has the unique characteristic that it can be public, because the wallets are protected by encryption. And it's shared, because a novel mechanism allows the database to be simultaneously maintained by any number of 'exchanges". Anyone with money or bitcoin can build an exchange, and the activity is funded by a form of foreign exchange...as people convert their native currencies too or from bitcoin, the exchange charges a fee or a spread.

And that's the simple view of how it works. My own experience with it hasn't been good. I've followed it almost from the beginning, and at first I was sure that it would be shut down by regulators or would simply fail from lack of interest. When neither happened, I reasoned that latching on to exponential growth for a period of time could be profitable. So I set aside a sum of money to invest. At the time, the largest bitcoin exchange in the world was an organization called "Mt Gox". I started a wallet, and prepared to exchange some serious money for bitcoin. But before I could hit that button, Mt Gox went belly up. There was a lot of mystery surrounding the failure. Something like a billion dollars in bitcoin went missing (which is theoretically impossible), and remains missing to this day. I may have narrowly missed making multiple millions, but I also narrowly missed being defrauded. I was extremely lucky to have avoided that loss, and I consider it a life lesson.

What are the goals of the digital coin community? Still to replace, or rather to destroy, central banks. And as the recent Gamestop kerfuffle has revealed to anyone who cares to really understand, a new goal is to replace the securities clearing houses. I hope that never happens. If it does, then bitcoin will become the neutron star of the entire world financial system, drawing in every last dime of legitimate money before flaming out in a super nova. So as a goal for humanity, it's comparable to colonizing Mars:if you get there, your spectacular achievement will be rewarded by life in an airless desert, bombarded by space debris and cosmic rays, and finally dying alone in a cosmic dead end. But that's just my humble opinion.