What is Bitcoin?
You wouldn't actually have to have been living under a rock not to understand what it is, but chances are that you have at least heard the name. Bitcoin was invented by Satoshi Nakamoto who described the cryptocurrency as a A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. It's a completely digital money, and being the first decentralized peer-to-peer payment network powered by its users with no middlemen or central authority, it's still the biggest cryptocurrency in the world.
All payments in Bitcoin are handled by users themselves, there are no central servers, and all payments are settled roughly within 10 minutes, from anywhere in the world to anywhere in the world. Compared to normal bank transactions between different banks or countries, you could say the transactions happens at the speed of light.
The transactions are recorded permanently on blockchain (a digital ledger in which transactions made in bitcoin or another cryptocurrency are recorded chronologically and publicly.). The ledger is then shared with Bitcoin miners and nodes who verify transactions to keep the network secure. For their 'work' and electricity they use, the miners are rewarded with new bitcoins.
There can only ever be 21 million bitcoins. So the price of bitcoin (currently trading at around $8700) has increased so much because of the demand for Bitcoin.
All payments in Bitcoin are handled by users themselves, there are no central servers, and all payments are settled roughly within 10 minutes, from anywhere in the world to anywhere in the world. Compared to normal bank transactions between different banks or countries, you could say the transactions happens at the speed of light.
The transactions are recorded permanently on blockchain (a digital ledger in which transactions made in bitcoin or another cryptocurrency are recorded chronologically and publicly.). The ledger is then shared with Bitcoin miners and nodes who verify transactions to keep the network secure. For their 'work' and electricity they use, the miners are rewarded with new bitcoins.
There can only ever be 21 million bitcoins. So the price of bitcoin (currently trading at around $8700) has increased so much because of the demand for Bitcoin.
more in bitcoin
Two pizzas for 10,000 Bitcoins
It's an old news but still worth thinking about. Back in 2010 a Florida programmer Laszlo Hanyecz managed to talk someone in Domino's pizza into selling two pizzas for 10,000 Bitcoins he had mined.
It's an old news but still worth thinking about. Back in 2010 a Florida programmer Laszlo Hanyecz managed to talk someone in Domino's pizza into selling two pizzas for 10,000 Bitcoins he had mined.
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