What is a bitcoin and what is it for? Overall, Bitcoin is a decentralized payment system (node-to-node) that works without the need for a central authority or third parties to control double currency spending. In particular, Bitcoin are three things at once:- Bitcoin is an accounting unit of a payment system (that is, a currency) that makes payments online via instantaneous and irreversible.- Bitcoin is a protocol that serves as a standard framework for performing person-to-person electronic transactions in a network of peers and peers, without servers and without the need for intervention by a third party.- Bitcoin is a network that serves to create a decentralized database, based on consensus, where anyone can conduct business operations.
The protocol and the Bitcoin network can be used in different ways and there are already many ideas on how to incorporate this technology (blockchain) to other uses. For example: IBM has a proposal to use blockchain technology to keep track of owners and permits on "the internet of things" or everyday objects such as refrigerators, light bulbs, and so on. That is, if I have a refrigerator, I do not want another person to communicate with her or see what I have inside. A system of permissions guarantees this hierarchy without needing a super-system, as it would be done with a distributed and decentralized database ... like bitcoin.Any need that can be met with a decentralized and consensus database, which does not die and is always accessible, can be adapted to this technology. And that is what is truly revolutionary. For example, an identification system could have its database always on-line with near-absolute resilience to attacks and generate falsifiable documents.Another example is Litecoin (a cryptomoneda similar to bitcoin), which uses the bitcoin protocol, but on a different network.In addition: Bitcoin is clonable in all its aspects thanks to it is free software. But before you see how far you can go, let's see where it comes from.
2. What is the story behind bitcoins? On October 31, 2008 at 18:10:00 GMT, Satoshi Nakamoto published in an email cryptography list an article that posed the conceptual idea of Bitcoin. In that note, Nakamoto explains that he had been working on a new electronic cash system that is totally peer-to-peer (person-to-person), without the need for intermediaries. In addition, it says that the transactions can be carried out safely and without possibility of fraud to the system and that the total circulation of currencies would eventually be 21 million.On January 12, 2009, the first transaction with bitcoins was made. On October 5, 2009, New Liberty Standard published the first exchange rates of Bitcoin against the dollar, which for that day was 1,309 bitcoins / US $. And on May 22, 2010 the first pizza purchase was made using bitcoins.Already by February 9, 2011, each bitcoin was quoted at US $ 1. And in April 2013 bitcoin broke the US $ 100 per unit barrier.
3. How much is a bitcoin worth? The value of the bitcoin currency is defined by market forces. That is, the value of a bitcoin depends on its supply and demand.Currently, about 15 million bitcoins are traded per month. The main exchange houses are btchina, okcoin.com, bitfinex and Bitstamp. And currently more than 80% of bitcoins are traded in RMB (yuan).
4. Where can I use a bitcoin? Nowadays you can buy practically everything you want using bitcoin. Tickets can be paid on Expedia, buy computers at Dell.com or newegg.com, furniture and housewares at Overstock.com and even buy directly at amazon.com with discounts of up to 20% using services like brawker.com or purse .io. And every day there are more ways to use bitcoin to buy goods and services.5. What do I do to get bitcoins? There are only two ways to get a bitcoin. The first is to buy it in a market like bitstamp.net, okcoin.com, bitfinex, huobi, btc-e, coinbase and bter. the second is "undermining". And here it is important to explain this process because mining is a verb that can lend itself to confusion: mining is the process with which the system overcomes the problem of double spending or system fraud. Bitcoin stores the transaction and broadcast information in a set of sheets called "blocks" and s where all the transactions of the moment are written and the passes are confirmed. A block is, so to speak, the book of electronic transactions made with bitcoins.
