What Is Bitcoin?

You may have heard of Bitcoin, but if you haven't it is a digital cryptocurrency. Bitcoin is the most popular cryptocurrency standing at around $57000 at the time of this writing. That's right, to own just one bitcoin it would cost you about the cost of a luxury vehicle.

Major companies are also accepting Bitcoin such as Expedia, Overstock, and Microsoft. Crytocurrency has become an alternative investment class. Bitcoin is not simply a currency or protocol. Bitcoin is the ultimate showcase of trust in mathematics and perfectly embodies the changing times we live in. Disrupting the money space is also disrupting our cultural, social and political systems.

If you are interested in adding Bitcoin to your portfolio, check out this quick video on How To Safely Buy Bitcoin.

Bitcoin, is the world’s first decentralized digital person-to-person cryptocurrency and is considered to be a revolution In present currency/financial markets. Bitcoin was started in 2009 by a mysterious programmer under the pseudonym “Satoshi Nakomoto”.This digital currency is gaining huge popularity worldwide and mass adoption. As the popularity of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are increasing, so is the eagerness of people to know more about it.

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 allows a user to send and receive bitcoins with them. This is how Bitcoin works for most users.

Behind the scenes, the Bitcoin network is sharing a public ledger called the “blockchain”. This ledger contains every transaction ever processed, allowing 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, allowing all users to have full control over sending bitcoins from their own Bitcoin addresses. In addition, anyone can process transactions using the computing power of specialized hardware and earn a reward in bitcoins for this service. This is often called “mining”.

Why Does Bitcoin Have Value?

Bitcoins have value because they are useful as a form of money. Bitcoin has the characteristics of money (durability, portability, fungibility, scarcity, divisibility, and recognizability) based on the properties of mathematics rather than relying on physical properties (like gold and silver) or trust in central authorities (like fiat currencies). In short, Bitcoin is backed by mathematics. With these attributes, all that is required for a form of money to hold value is trust and adoption. In the case of Bitcoin, this can be measured by its growing base of users, merchants, and startups. As with all currency, bitcoin’s value comes only and directly from people willing to accept them as payment.

Learn more from our friends Here, at Bitcoin Made Simple