What is Bitcoin?
With the Bitcoin price so volatile everyone is curious. Bitcoin, the category creator of blockchain technology, is the World Wide Ledger yet extremely complicated and no one definition fully encapsulates it. By analogy it is like being able to send a gold coin via email. It is a consensus network that enables a new payment system and a completely digital money.
It is the first decentralized peer-to-peer payment network that is powered by its users with no central authority or middlemen. Bitcoin was the first practical implementation and is currently the most prominent triple entry bookkeeping system in existence.
Beware of the confusingly similar Bcash, BCH, Bitcoin Cash project.
Who created Bitcoin?
The first Bitcoin specification and proof of concept was published in 2009 by an unknown individual under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto who revealed little about himself and left the project in late 2010. The Bitcoin community has since grown exponentially.
Satoshi's anonymity often raises unjustified concerns because of a misunderstanding of Bitcoin's open-source nature. Everyone has access to all of the source code all of the time and any developer can review or modify the software code. As such, the identity of Bitcoin's inventor is probably as relevant today as the identity of the person who invented paper.
Who is involved in Bitcoin?
Over $1B of investment into Bitcoin and blockchain companies has taken place resulting in thousands of companies and hundreds of thousands of individuals involved from around the world.
Who controls the Bitcoin network?
Nobody owns the Bitcoin network much like no one owns the technology behind email or the Internet. Bitcoin transactions are verified by Bitcoin miners which has an entire industry and Bitcoin cloud mining options. While developers are improving the software they cannot force a change in the Bitcoin protocol because all users are free to choose what software and version they use.
In order to stay compatible with each other, all users need to use software complying with the same rules. Bitcoin can only work correctly with a complete consensus among all users. Therefore, all users and developers have a strong incentive to protect this consensus.
How does Bitcoin work?
From a user perspective, Bitcoin is nothing more than a mobile app or computer program that provides a personal Bitcoin wallet and enables a user to send and receive bitcoins.
Behind the scenes, the Bitcoin network is sharing a massive public ledger called the "block chain". This ledger contains every transaction ever processed which enables a user's computer to verify the validity of each transaction. The authenticity of each transaction is protected by digital signatures corresponding to the sending addresses therefore allowing all users to have full control over sending bitcoins.
Thus, there is no fraud, no chargebacks and no identifying information that could be compromised resulting in identity theft. To learn more about Bitcoin, you can consult the original Bitcoin whitepaper, read through the extremely thorough Frequently Asked Questions, listen to a Bitcoin podcast or read the latest Bitcoin news.
Sponsors for free Bitcoins
Many people new to Bitcoin are curious about how to get some. Bitcoin faucets, places where bitcoins are given away for free, have been a part of spreading Bitcoin since the earliest days. But one problem is running out of bitcoins to give! That is why we have figured out a sustainable way to give away free bitcoins with sponsors.
There is a lot happening in the background, but these three charts are what drives everything. People all over the world are connecting these dots. The Fed is creating trillions of dollars at the same time the rate of issuance in bitcoin is about to be cut in half (see the bitcoin halvening). While most may not be aware of these two divergent paths, a growing number are (knowledge distributes with time) and even a small number of people figuring it out ultimately puts a significant imbalance between the demand for bitcoin and its supply. When this happens, the value of bitcoin goes up. It is that simple and that is what draws everyone else in: price. Price is what communicates information. All those otherwise not paying attention react to price signals. The underlying demand is ultimately dictated by fundamentals (even if speculation exists), but the majority do not need to understand those fundamentals to recognize that the market is sending a signal. hacker bitcoin котировка bitcoin