Research & Writing : Persuasive Essay

Step 2:

Option 1:

Help one or more classmates. Try reading their paragraphs aloud to ensure their writing is clear and free from spelling, grammar, and punctuation mistakes.

Option 2:

How can they improve quotes, paraphrasing, or summarizing, so that sources do not overshadow their ideas? Or, how can they apply APA formatting correctly?

Recommended this topics.

I chose the proofreading prompt for this week's discussion. I will include my beginning two paragraphs of my final paper below and I am seeking opinions on whether the overall theme of the writing is made clear or if it is too ambiguous. Thanks!

Many of us have seen populations of homeless people in cities around the country or the world and inevitably we ask ourselves; What happened to these people? How did they end up here? If you were to ask a homeless person how they ended up on the streets, on the fringes of society, and their response was “Bitcoin,” would it surprise you? How much do you know about Bitcoin? This burgeoning cryptocurrency has made headlines across the world because of the rapid increase in its value, and the angst is growing for millennials who do not want to miss out on their opportunity to make their fortune. Before jumping in head first with their Bitcoin investments, I want to caution these young adults.

Millennials have been raised in and fallen in love with, the era of ever-expanding technology, which now includes cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin.  Unlike new smartphones or TVs, Bitcoin has the potential to bankrupt you and your family. Young adults under the age of thirty should not invest in Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a new currency that is volatile and not backed by any government, and there are sparse, regulations surrounding Bitcoin that can protect consumers. Bitcoin was invented in 2009 by a programmer using the alias Satoshi Nakamoto and is based on block chain technology where math problems need to be solved by a computer to enter a lottery for a chance to obtain a bitcoin (Davis, 2011). Bitcoin was developed as a peer-to-peer currency which would allow people to send money directly to another person without the transaction passing through a financial institution (Nakamoto, 2008). Proponents of Bitcoin sing the praise of taking out the financial institutions that serve as the middleman role for all transactions because there are often transaction fees that can add up. The problem with this concept is financial institutions are designed to protect their customers and ensure all parties are made whole if there is a problem with a transaction. This means that a true peer-to-peer transaction that Bitcoin has predicated itself on puts the users at risk of fraud without any recourse to recoup money that was lost due to fraud or other malicious activities. To provide security without a financial institution, public encryption keys are used to transfer Bitcoins from one person to another which is adequate for digital security, but if a private key is lost or compromised, then their entire Bitcoin investment could be at risk (Davis, 2011).