What determines the value of a bitcoin?

What determines the value of a bitcoin?
Ultimately, the value of a bitcoin is determined by what people will pay for it. In this way, there's a similarity to how stocks are priced.

How do I buy bitcoin?
If you're willing to assume the risk associated with owning bitcoin, there is an increasing number of digital currency exchanges like Coinmama, CEX, Kraken and Coinbase (https://coinbase.com) — the largest and most established of them -- where you can buy, sell and store bitcoins.

What can I do with bitcoin?
You can use bitcoin to buy things from more than 100,000 merchants, though still few major ones. You can sell it. Or you can just hang on to it. Note that there are no inherent transaction fees with bitcoin, although exchanges like Coinbase typically charge a fee when you buy or sell.

Is all of this legal?
Short, qualified answer: Yes, for now, as long as — like any currency — you don't do illegal things with it. For instance, bitcoin was the sole currency accepted on Silk Road, the Dark Web marketplace for drugs and other illicit goods and services that was shuttered by the FBI in 2013.

What are the risks?
Legal and regulatory hazards aside, as both an investment and currency, bitcoin is very risky. When you wake up in the morning, you know pretty precisely how much a dollar can buy. The financial value of a bitcoin, however, is highly volatile and may swing widely from day to day and even hour to hour.

OK, so what about — wait, there are more risks?
Because bitcoin is so new and decentralized, there is plenty of murkiness and many unknowns. Even the technical rules for mining are still evolving and up for debate.
The IRS views bitcoins as property, not currency. There are tax implications and a federal judge recently ruled that Coinbase must surrender records to the IRS on transactions of $20,000 or more.

Now I sort of understand bitcoin. WTF is Bitcoin Cash?
In August 2017, different sects within the bitcoin mining community had a disagreement about the rules governing the mining process — specifically, what constitutes the appropriate size (in megabytes) of a block. Unable to form a consensus, there was a fork in the blockchain, with the bitcoin originalists going one way and the group favoring larger blocks going another to start Bitcoin Cash.

Are there other cryptocurrencies?
Yes. More than a thousand, with more sprouting up every day. Aside from bitcoin, which is the real progenitor of them all, other well-known alternative currencies include Ethereum, Ripple and Litecoin.