What is Bitcoin?
Bitcoin is money no one can take without your permission. It cannot be inflated away or confiscated, because no one person, company, or government controls it.
Bitcoin is digital money governed by computer code running on thousands of computers across the world. This computer code is separately run by many thousands of disparate individuals and organizations. This distributed base of code and people is ultimately what gives bitcoin its strong assurances against seizure and inflation.
Bitcoin is the first money system ever created that has a monetary policy anyone can understand and rely on, because no individual or organization has the ability to change it. When Bitcoin was launched in 2009, its monetary policy was defined in its initial codebase as a fixed-supply of 21,000,000 bitcoins. Copies of this code are now running all over the world, working together to process bitcoin transactions every second of every day. Unlike every other digital money system, there is no central point of control that make changes to the money supply.
This distributed nature and fixed supply give bitcoin properties similar to gold, but in electronic, digital form. That makes it fit for the modern economy, and allows for other capabilities that are not possible with physical assets. One way to conceptualize bitcoin is as "digital gold", but there are many ways to think about bitcoin.
How Bitcoin is Different
Until Bitcoin, all electronic money and digital transactions had to be managed by some authority, be it a bank, company, or government. Someone always had to sit in the middle of your transaction, with the ability to approve or deny it, and the currency used always had to be controlled by a central issuer that fully controlled monetary policy (ie, usually a government currency like USD or EUR).
This is not the case with bitcoin. When you want to use it, you can connect your wallet software to the internet and let it talk to the bitcoin network as a whole. You do not need to "login" to any service or have someone else issue transactions on your behalf. Combined with bitcoin's algorithmic monetary policy, this means you fully control your bitcoin, and no one can interfere with your ability to use it, or inflate the value away through monetary policy.
Why Bitcoin Matters
A few of the implications of bitcoin's unique properties include:
Bitcoin is the first scarce digital asset. Until bitcoin, anything digital could be easily copied. Satoshi Nakamoto's solution to this "double spending problem" and related issues around distributing the initial money supply fairly, was a breakthrough in computer science.
Scarcity is a key property of money. Until bitcoin, money native to the internet was not possible. With digital scarcity, native digital money can exist. It's been said that "if the internet were a country, bitcoin would be its currency".
Bitcoin is an open protocol, like other foundations of the internet such as tcp/ip (internet data packets) and smtp (email). Open protocols often dominate indefinately once they achieve an initial critical mass, due to the network effects that build-up on top of them. Bitcoin as a protocol for digital money and store of value is likely no different.
A store of value that's purely digital has many advantages over physical counterparts. Bitcoin can be moved with ease across the world, verified as authentic immediately, and even encrypted and "backed-up" in a "brain wallet" (memorized key).
As scarce digital value with no middleman, bitcoin represents perhaps the only asset that can be completely owned, controlled, and transported without reliance on any 3rd party.
The combination of bitcoin's properties as "digital gold", its censorship resistance, and flexibility due to its digital nature make it a powerful tool for people to take direct control over their financial lives, and/or take refuge from inflationary central bank monetary policies. This is why some describe bitcoin as "a peaceful revolution".
Bitcoin (pre)History
With the rise of PCs and public-key cryptography in the late 1970s, people began to realize that a fully electronic currency, not controlled by any single entity, might be possible. For 30 years, various cryptographers and entrepreneurs launched attempts at such a currency, but never solved key engineering and incentives trade-offs necessary to make it work well.
This changed in late 2008 when Satoshi Nakamoto published the bitcoin whitepaper to a cryptography mailing list, and subsquently published the bitcoin code and launched the bitcoin network in early 2009. Satoshi's achievement was three decades in the making, melding ideas from many other digital currency attempts into one elegant system. For decades many suspected that if a natively-digital money system without central control could be made to work, it would grow and thrive; Bitcoin is proving that true.
ico ethereum bitcoin darkcoin перевод ethereum jax bitcoin bitcoin продам http bitcoin bitcoin автоматически bitcoin биржа курс bitcoin litecoin bitcoin майнинг tether bitcoin cli
bitcoin investment
bitcoin халява bitcoin монета bitcoin компьютер bitcoin purchase bitcoin cap monero coin
cryptocurrency reddit dat bitcoin steam bitcoin bitcoin pizza monero майнер проблемы bitcoin bio bitcoin bitcoin metal bitcoin pools This type of exchange cannot be hacked and therefore your coins cannot be stolen2. How do you explain Blockchain technology to someone who doesn't know it?bitcoin surf bitcoin mac bitcoin community bitcoin пополнить bitcoin порт консультации bitcoin javascript bitcoin ethereum poloniex bitcoin hub bitcoin терминалы
bitcoin yen redex bitcoin testnet bitcoin кран ethereum ebay bitcoin ethereum обмен bitcoin shops We have defined free software to mean 'free of monetization techniques which contravene user privacy.' In most cases, free software is free of all the trappings of commercialization, including: restrictive copyrights, expensive licenses, and restrictions on alterations and redistribution. Bitcoin and Linux are examples of free software in both senses: both that it is free of surveillance, and also free to distribute and copy.bitcoin goldmine bitcoin форумы bitcoin 2x bitcoin мастернода The answer to the question of 'Should I buy Litecoin or Ethereum?' remains the same, unless Litecoin’s purpose hits closer to home for you than either Bitcoin or Ethereum.status bitcoin bitcoin greenaddress bitcoin вложения nanopool ethereum monero кран ethereum php bitcoin обвал ethereum капитализация
600 bitcoin вебмани bitcoin ethereum bitcoin coinder bitcoin cryptonator ethereum приложения bitcoin
bitcoin сбор dark bitcoin bitcoin обменники bitcoin word bitcoin кости bitcoin пожертвование анонимность bitcoin bitcoin sec bitcoin nvidia ethereum info alpari bitcoin ethereum аналитика monero core nodes bitcoin is bitcoin dog bitcoin rpc bitcoin bitcoin 4096
bitcoin office bitcoin зарегистрироваться bitcoin bbc ethereum обмен bitcoin терминал x2 bitcoin 1000 bitcoin ethereum node пример bitcoin
tx bitcoin ann ethereum
charts bitcoin биржи monero bitcoin earning bitcoin click кошель bitcoin monero обмен bitcoin accelerator monero кран bitcoin транзакция pplns monero
bitcoin start
testnet bitcoin сети ethereum
download bitcoin падение ethereum monero новости monero новости bitcoin dice tether wifi HarmonyHarmonyJavaiso bitcoin
ultimate bitcoin bitrix bitcoin moon bitcoin bitcoin png bitcoin валюты bitcoin обозреватель bitcoin china ethereum testnet контракты ethereum
capitalization cryptocurrency bitcoin stellar bitcoin 1000 bitcoin 999 difficulty bitcoin пирамида bitcoin forex bitcoin
bitcoin roulette ethereum обменять bitcoin москва bitcoin knots http bitcoin обменять monero bitcoin игры
addnode bitcoin bitcoin tor bitcoin trojan
bitcoin продам
world bitcoin
2x bitcoin bitcoin украина bitcoin capital bitcoin virus moto bitcoin rub bitcoin bitcoin novosti использование bitcoin bitcoin conference loans bitcoin bitcoin магазины bitcoin расшифровка
курс monero bitcoin loan bitcoin сложность форумы bitcoin bitcoin серфинг bitcoin wm bitcoin доллар проблемы bitcoin difficulty monero bitcoin greenaddress
bitcoin monkey bitcoin доходность
600 bitcoin bitcoin принимаем bitcoin status 2048 bitcoin bitcoin investment
api bitcoin
nicehash ethereum
майнер monero dog bitcoin
сборщик bitcoin bitcoin etherium little bitcoin ethereum vk reklama bitcoin direct bitcoin cpa bitcoin
ethereum forks ethereum перевод bitcoin explorer bitcoin laundering bitcoin прогноз maps bitcoin MINethereum chaindata bitcoin миллионеры валюта bitcoin bitcoin eth фри bitcoin fpga ethereum bitcoin usa торги bitcoin
bitcoin автоматический ethereum developer daily bitcoin Forks are related to the fact that different parties need to use common rules to maintain the history of the blockchain. When parties are not in agreement, alternative chains may emerge. While most forks are short-lived some are permanent. Short-lived forks are due to the difficulty of reaching fast consensus in a distributed system. Whereas permanent forks (in the sense of protocol changes) have been used to add new features to a blockchain, they can also be used to reverse the effects of hacking such as the case with Ethereum and Ethereum Classic, or avert catastrophic bugs on a blockchain as was the case with the bitcoin fork on 6 August 2010.bitcoin hacker monero nvidia bitcoin uk ethereum токены скрипт bitcoin php bitcoin
claim bitcoin ethereum parity bitcoin prune bitcoin elena
bitcoin advcash bitcoin scan ethereum studio bitcoin кошельки bitcoin india bitcoin journal miningpoolhub monero bitcoin mining tokens ethereum daemon monero mercado bitcoin sberbank bitcoin взлом bitcoin
x2 bitcoin security bitcoin конвектор bitcoin майнер monero bitcoin miner алгоритм bitcoin bitcoin virus перспективы bitcoin instant bitcoin robot bitcoin кости bitcoin майнеры monero
electrum bitcoin ethereum rig monero алгоритм forum ethereum bitcoin обналичивание bitcoin mixer bitcoin dice bitcoin rpc bitcoin alliance coinder bitcoin loans bitcoin bitcoin count майнер ethereum bitcoin хешрейт обменять ethereum cryptocurrency перевод bitcoin упал bitcoin alliance microsoft bitcoin особенности ethereum red bitcoin config bitcoin trader bitcoin
tether программа email bitcoin bitcoin nvidia bitcoin видеокарта