If you’ve been keeping up with the tech industry, you’ve likely heard of the Bitcoin. They are almost untraceable, completely digital amounts of currency that exist on a device for the purpose of exchanging online currency. In the past, Bitcoins were used entirely underground on the Deep Web for illegal transactions. Recently, however, Bitcoins have made their way into the spotlight and are now being considered as a way to replace the current system of online currency, providing huge advantages over banks or services such as Paypal.

It’s pretty clear at this point that Bitcoins are the future. Zynga, the company behind Farmville, is currently in a testing process using Bitcoins for their microtransactions. Over the span of 2013, Bitcoins have gone from a shady form of transaction to becoming a respectable trading method. The anonymous nature of the Bitcoin can be very appealing to buyers, providing a more secure transaction in this time of uncertainty online. Cutting banks out of the transaction process is, in the end, more secure. There’s also the option of mining Bitcoins, a process that allows supercomputers to solve complex algorithms and actually create new currency.

Currently, Bitcoin access isn’t too accessible. There are several shady transfer processes for obtaining Bitcoins with real money, but complete public acceptance of this currency would open up new business opportunities to work with the Bitcoin market, regulating it into common place on the web. Amazon, Ebay, any merchant website would benefit from such a simple transaction method. It just takes a leap of faith from companies such as Zynga to encorporate the Bitcoin into their transactions and the rest will follow. I predict you’ll be seeing a lot more of this topic in the coming year.