What is bitcoin?
Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency created in 2009. Marketplaces called “bitcoin exchanges” allow people to buy or sell bitcoins using different currencies.
No wonder Bitcoin emerged in 2008 shortly after Occupy Wall Street accused big banks of abusing borrowers’ money, cheating customers, manipulating the system, and charging mind-boggling fees. Bitcoin pioneers wanted to put the seller in charge, eliminate the middleman, cancel interest rates and make transactions transparent, to corrupt corruption and cut fees. They created a decentralized system where you could control your funds and know what was going on.
Bitcoin has come a long way in a relatively short time. Around the world, businesses from REEDS Jewelers, a major jewelry chain in the US, to a private hospital in Warsaw, Poland, accept its currency.
Billion dollar companies like Dell, Expedia, PayPal and Microsoft do too. Websites promote it – publications like Bitcoin Magazine publish their news – forums discuss cryptocurrency and exchange their coins. It has its application programming interface (API), price index and exchange rate.
Problems include account theft, high volatility and transaction delays. On the other hand, people in third world countries may find Bitcoin to be their most trusted channel for giving or receiving money.
Understanding bitcoin
In its simplest form, Bitcoin is a virtual currency or a reference to technology. You can transact by check, wire or cash. You can also use Bitcoin (or BTC) where you forward the buyer to your signature, which is a long line of encrypted security code with 16 distinct symbols.
The buyer decodes the code with his smartphone to get his cryptocurrency. Put another way; cryptocurrency is an exchange of digital information that allows you to buy or sell goods and services. The transaction gains security and trust by running on a peer-to-peer computer network similar to Skype, or BitTorrent, a file-sharing system.
Bitcoin transactional properties
- Irreversible : Once confirmed, a transaction cannot be reversed. By anyone. And nobody means nobody. Not you, not your bank, not the President of the United States, not Satoshi, not your miner. Nobody. If you send money, you send it. Ready. No one can help you if you send your funds to a scammer or if a hacker steals them from your computer. There is no safety net.
- Pseudonym: Neither transactions nor accounts are connected to real-world identities. You receive Bitcoins at so-called addresses, which are strings of approximately 30 characters at random. While it is usually possible to analyze the transaction flow, it is not necessarily possible to connect the real-world identity of users with these addresses.
- Fast and Global: The transaction is propagated almost instantly on the network and is confirmed within a few minutes. As they take place on a global computer network, they are completely indifferent to your physical location. It doesn’t matter if I send Bitcoin to my neighbor or someone on the other side of the world.
- Secure: Bitcoin funds are locked in a public key encryption system. Only the owner of the private key can send cryptocurrency. Strong encryption and the magic of big numbers make it impossible to crack this scheme. A Bitcoin address is more secure than Fort Knox.
Where to get bitcoins
You can get your first bitcoins from any of these places:
- A cryptocurrency exchange where you can exchange ‘regular’ coins for bitcoins;
- A Bitcoin ATM (or cryptocurrency exchange) where you can exchange bitcoins or cash for another cryptocurrency;
- A classified service where you can find a seller who will help you exchange bitcoins for cash;
- You could sell a product or service for bitcoins.
Careful! Bitcoin is famous for scams, so before using any service, look for feedback from previous customers or post your questions on the Bitcoin forum.
How it works
Unlike traditional currencies, which are issued by central banks, Bitcoin has no central monetary authority. Instead, it is supported by a peer-to-peer computer network made up of its users’ machines, similar to the networks that support BitTorrent, a file-sharing system, and Skype, an audio, video, and audio service. chat.
Bitcoins are generated mathematically, as computers on this network perform tasks that are difficult to crunch numbers, a procedure known as Bitcoin “mining”. The Bitcoin system maths are designed so that it becomes progressively more difficult to “mine” Bitcoins over time, and the total number that can be mined is capped at around 21 million. So there is no way a central bank can issue a flood of new Bitcoins and devalue those already in circulation.
The future of bitcoin
Nobody knows what will become of bitcoin. Mainly because it is an unregulated currency, but some countries like Japan, China and Australia have started to weigh regulations. Governments are concerned about taxation and their lack of control over the currency.
