What are the Bitcoins?

morinjesus (39)in #bitcoin • 7 years ago

First of all, a bit of history to know where the Bitcoins come from.

Bitcoins are born in the mind of its creator Satoshi Nakamoto (this is just a pseudonym, to date it is unknown who created the BTC, there is speculation but nothing sure and the truth does not matter much) the year 2009, the fundamental idea was to create a Decentralized currency of any government or region, that way Bitcoins can be used anywhere on the planet, as long as there is a connection to the internet, a seller and a buyer as an example.

Now a bit of the dark history of the BTC.
When Bitcoins were invented, it was mostly used in the infamous DeepWeb (I will already speak extensively about that network also later). There it was commercialized ALL in BTC because it is one of the few coins that offer security at a paranoid level and that It appeals to many, more than anything to those who sold drugs, weapons, special pornographic material, human parts, etc.

Until a few months ago the Bitcoin network remained unperturbed, the BTC rose in value a little, but by things that happened in the world: Cyprus, political problems, banks in possible bankruptcy, etc., many people moved their money to the network BTC, which made the value of the currency rise from $ 25 per 1BTC to $ 261 per 1BTC, hence the whole planet just noticed the currency and pay more attention, as they all wanted their slice of the cake.

Since that great peak of value, the BTC has remained with values over $ 100 and that makes everyone want to trade in the currency, the bad thing is that they do not bother to find out its virtues and its disadvantages before investing and they gave Cases where you lost a LOT of money for beginner mistakes, that's why I encourage you to write this Blog so that those mistakes will not happen again.

I will now explain in more detail what the BTCs are and how they are handled (this text I extracted from https://es.bitcoin.it/wiki/ because it is the technical explanation easier to understand, but I will make it even easier later .

"Bitcoins use a cryptographic public key. A coin contains the public key of its owner. When a coin is transferred from user A to user B, A adds the public key of B to the coin and then signs this coin with the private key of user A. User B now owns the coin and can transfer it at any time. User A can not re-transfer the same currency that he has already transferred to another user because the network collectively maintains a public list of all transactions made. Before each transaction the validity of each currency is verified. "

In other words, each BTC transaction regardless of its value is digitally signed with a unique number, when the BTCs are sent to another person, that unique number is used to validate and transfer the BTCs to the end user PERMANENTLY, that way the unique number Is no longer the property of the user who sends the BTCs and only the FINAL user now has control of the BTCs sent, that is why also any transaction sent in IRREVERSIBLE, that is why the BTC was used a lot to do frauds and that is where many People sent their BTCs and never received anything in return, we will learn to avoid this type of fraud later.
Recapping then the BTCs are:

A currency totally ANONIMA and without CONTROL by any government or country.
It is a purely virtual currency and is managed with P2P protocols.
Its value as any currency can go up or down, depending on the disturbance of your network.
Anyone in the world can have and send BTC without restrictions.
It is relatively easy to obtain (either buying or mining).
It is completely SAFE and with one step (there are no returns).

Therefore trading in BTC deserves to be studied BEFORE who will be sent the BTC and what guarantees we will have that the product purchased reaches us either physically or virtual.

As long as there are computers connected to the BITCOIN network the currency will exist and it will be able to trade with it, so that it will cease to exist absolutely ALL transactions would have to be invalidated and erased in some way, but that will never happen because the Block Database That makes up the BITCOIN network can be easily downloaded by anyone, besides there are servers dedicated only to make a daily backup and finally it would be impossible to eliminate all transactions because there will always be a copy somewhere and not only in the Bitcoin network and That transactions can now be read and found on many web pages and other networks attached to the normal internet.

The only way to destroy the BTC network would be to destroy the entire planet, that's easy.

How do you get started in the BITCOIN world? Very easy, you simply need an ADDRESS where to receive your BTC and from there you can save or send them to someone.

One directionN BTC validates is similar to this: 15uim6ST7eikyRgE5yFRBhr4qzZ2b8dcgu
They are 35 alphanumerical characters that are created in any client accepted by the BITCOIN network, the address they see there is mine, if someone sends me BTC there, only I can have control over them and NOBODY could move them without my PRIVATE KEY.

When you create a BTC ADDRESS to receive or send BTC, this one arrives with a UNICA private key that is like your password, that key JAMAS sends it to nobody and only YOU should have control over it, since if someone else knows it, You could easily move your accumulated BTCs in that direction to wherever you like and you would never recover them (another rookie error, the private key is never sent to ANYONE, only the BTC address is sent).

The easiest way to create a BTC address is to download the OFFICIAL client of the BITCOIN network, the famous Bitcoin QT, it is downloaded from the website: http://bitcoin.org The client is light and easy to install, but it has its advantages And disadvantages to use it, the main advantage is that it is the OFFICIAL client and is the client that millions of people use for convenience, its main disadvantage is that to send or receive BTC you must wait until you DOWNLOAD and UPDATE each time your main database And match it with the Database Bitcoin Network, currently this Database weighs 8.5GB, so it is HUGE, but if you do not have space problems, the fact that lowering the DB helps to make the BITCOIN NETWORK more secure and Create an additional backup point on your machine, act as a backup in case of any problems on the network.

As soon as you install the official Bitcoin client, you will start downloading the Database and it will take hours or even days to complete the process, depending on your internet connection, you will only be able to make transactions or check your account status when BD is updated, in The personal start with this client, but I did not want to lose some GB on my machine (although I was supporting the network) so I migrate to other Virtual Billeteras or clients my BTC addresses (I will explain in detail the process of migration to other clients In another publication).

Something they should understand is that BTCs are not on your machine, they are not on the client, BTCs are transactions that are only linked to an ADDRESS and this address is associated with a wallet or a Customer that ONLY serves as a VIEWER for BTCs , You can perfectly transfer your BTC ADDRESS and the BTCs in it to another BILLETERA or CLIENT, for that serves the PRIVATE KEY, but until you do not delete the BTC address of your first wallet BOTH Billeteras can operate with the BTCs that are in the transferred address , Since both wallets have access to the private key.

Another rookie error is to BUY private keys with a BTC amount in them, no doubt the BTCs are there, but it is very unlikely that only you have access to the public key, perfectly the one that sold you the private key and the BTCs associated with That address can continue to use them and could even sell the private key again and again and at some point you will see how those BTCs you bought disappear mysteriously, so ALWAYS you buy BTCs have to be transferred in full no matter what the reason for Half, you risk losing them if you do it differently.

Therefore, Trading in BTC is easy, to get them even easier, but you must take special care in how to trade with them and always look at the security of your transactions, that we will review little by little in this website, for now is everything, In the next post, I will speak extensively about the BTC, Wallets and Clients addresses, pros and cons of each one, different security levels that you can use in your wallets and some SECRETS to avoid extra costs in sending and receiving, there is still a lot to tell.