What is Bitcoin?
With the recent explosion of bitcoin, it has had many people asking "What is bitcoin?". Never fear, your question will be answered today!
Bitcoin is a completely electronic currency that was created in 2009 by anonymous individual or individuals with the alias Satoshi Nakamoto. Bitcoin is the first decentralized currency, this means there is no middle man or bank used during any transactions; true peer to peer transactions. This is huge and may very well revolutionize how we use money. You can purchase merchandise anonymously, make international payments easily and cheap since bitcoin is not pegged to any form of currency, and so far bitcoin has been the best investment tool for 2017.
Bitcoin is fully decentralized and is not owned by any person or entity, at the same time its owned by everyone who is part of the bitcoin network. Bitcoin is created electronically by "Miners"; Miners are individuals or companies that trade computer processing power for creating bitcoin. Bitcoin and other electronic currencies are based on encryption and miners are rewarded by using their processing power to solve the encryption problem. In Bitcoins case rewards are distributed every 10 minutes, in addition to creating more bitcoins miners allow transactions to occur. This was felt earlier this year when Bitcoin Gold was released and some miners moved their processing power over to the Bitcoin Gold Network, such a dramatic switch momentarily crippled the Bitcoin network and caused a severe delay to transactions.
You can acquire bit coin by becoming a miner your self or purchasing bitcoin from an exchange such as Coinbase. The setup is fairly simple and can be completed in 15 minutes. Once configured you will be provided with a digital wallet that can be used to hold your bitcoin and other electronic currencies.
One of the main reasons bitcoin is so secure is due to it's public ledger, the ledger is a books and records of every single transaction that has taken place on the Bitcoin network and is crosschecked by every miner on the network. If any one was to tamper(hack) with the ledger the entire network would be notified and the hacker or fraudulent activity and the attempt would be shutdown immediately. This transparency is what makes Bitcoin a very unique currency, the very fact that no one owns it but at the same time it is owned by all.
No one knows what the future holds for Bitcoin, whether it will become the status quo or fade away like so many fads; however I am very hopeful in bitcoins prospects. Bitcoin and it's technology solves a lot problems we are facing today, whether it be cyber security, money transfer to countries and institutions that do not have developed infrastructures, diversified asset allocation, user privacy, and most of all technological revolution... you can see something has begun that cannot be stopped.
If you are interested in getting into electronic currencies you can sign up to Coinbase using my affiliate link. If you sign up with $100 we both get 10 bucks for free.
Thank you in advance for taking the time to read this article.