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How Bitcoin Works
It's a bit like money . and it's a bit like a financial bubble. It's Bitcoin, and it may be giving us a glimpse of the future of money.
Bitcoin is a type of virtual currency brought to life by the internet, very powerful computers and the willingness of lot of people looking to embrace new forms of monetary exchange.
Bitcoin shares some similarities with real-world currencies, particularly its growing acceptance as a form of payment with more and more merchants, retailers and individuals, both online and offline. You can buy Microsoft products with Bitcoin, buy airline tickets through Expedia, or buy gift cards to superstores like Walmart.
Yet Bitcoin is also very different from traditional currencies. Unlike dollars or pounds, Bitcoin isn't backed by any government. It's a completely decentralized form of money. Bitcoin isn't linked to any sort of central banking system or issuing authority, and that's a big part of its appeal — instead of being swallowed into a system that's often sullied by human greed and manipulation, this currency exists in an online world driven by mathematics and clever encryption protocols.
You can use Bitcoin for all sorts of real transactions. To do so, you first buy bitcoins however you like, either through your credit card, a bank account or even anonymously with cash. Then your bitcoins are transferred directly into your Bitcoin wallet, and you can send and receive payments directly to a buyer or seller without the need for a typical go-between, such as a bank or credit card company.
By skipping the middleman in the transaction, you pay far less in associated fees. Each party in the deal can also maintain a much higher level of anonymity, which has both pros and cons for everyone involved. Think of Bitcoin as a digital equivalent of a cash transaction. If you're so inclined, it's a nearly untraceable way to do business.
Spending or receiving Bitcoin is as easy as sending an e-mail, and you can use your computer or your smartphone. That simplicity belies the fact that there's a whole lot of complicated math protecting all of these transactions to maintain their legitimacy and security.
Keep reading to see more about the mysterious rise of Bitcoin, as well as the inner workings of the network that keeps this so-called "cryptocurrency" alive and kicking.
How Bitcoin Works
- More on Blockchain and Bitcoin
What's the Vice Industry Token—A Crypto for Porn?
Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS)
How exactly to interpret bitcoin is a matter of controversy – as a currency, a store of value, a payment network, an asset class?
Fortunately, leaving the economic debates aside, it's pretty easy to answer what bitcoin actually is – software. Don't be fooled by stock images of shiny coins bearing modified Thai baht symbols. Bitcoin is a purely digital phenomenon, a set of protocols and processes. It is the most successful of hundreds of attempts to create virtual money through the use of cryptography (the science of making and breaking codes), though competition is heating up.
(Check out our new Bitcoin Page for real-time price quotes and news)
The Blockchain
Bitcoin is a network that runs on a protocol known as the blockchain. A 2008 paper by a person or people calling themselves Satoshi Nakamoto first described both the blockchain and bitcoin, and for a while the two terms were all but synonymous. The blockchain has since been conceptually divorced from its first application, and thousands of blockchains have been created using similar cryptographic techniques. This history can make the nomenclature confusing. "Blockchain" sometimes refers to the original, bitcoin blockchain; other times it refers to blockchain technology in general, or to any other specific blockchain, such as the one that powers Ethereum.
The basics of blockchain technology are mercifully straightforward. Any given blockchain consists of a single chain of discrete blocks of information, arranged chronologically. In principle this information can be any string of 1s and 0s – emails, contracts, land titles, marriage certificates, bond trades – and this versatility has caught the eye of governments and private corporations. In bitcoin's case, though, the information is mostly transactions.
Bitcoin is really just a list. Person A sent X bitcoin to person B, who sent Y bitcoin to person C, etc. By tallying these transactions up, everyone knows where individual users stand. Another name for a blockchain is a "distributed ledger," which emphasizes the key difference between this technology and a well-kept Word doc. Bitcoin's blockchain is public. Anyone can download it in its entirety or head to any number of sites that parse it. You can see, for example, that 15N3yGu3UFHeyUNdzQ5sS3aRFRzu5Ae7EZ sent 0.01718427 bitcoin to 1JHG2qjdk5Khiq7X5xQrr1wfigepJEK3t on August 14, 2017, between 11:10 and 11:20 a.m. If you were law enforcement or otherwise very sophisticated, you could probably figure out who controlled these addresses (the long strings of numbers and letters). Bitcoin's network is not totally anonymous, in other words, though taking certain precautions can make it very hard to link individuals to transactions.
Despite being absolutely public – or rather because of it – bitcoin is extremely difficult to tamper with. It has no physical presence, so you can't protect your bitcoin by locking it in a safe or burying it in the Canadian wilderness. In theory, all a thief would need to do to take it from you would be to add a line to the ledger, you paid me everything you have. A related worry is double spending. If a bad actor could spend some bitcoin, then spend it again, confidence in the currency's value would quickly evaporate.
To prevent either from happening, you need trust. In this case, the accustomed solution would be to transact through a central, neutral arbiter. A bank. Bitcoin has made that unnecessary, however. (It is probably not a coincidence Satoshi's original description was published in October 2008, when trust in banks was at a multigenerational low.) Rather than having a reliable authority keep the ledger and preside over the network, the bitcoin network is decentralized – everyone keeps an eye on everyone else. No one needs to know or trust anyone; assuming everything is working as intended, the cryptographic protocols ensure that each block of transactions is bolted onto the last in a long, immutable chain.
The process that maintains this trustless, public ledger is known as mining. Undergirding the network of bitcoin users, who trade the cryptocurrency among themselves, is a network of miners, who record these transactions on the blockchain.
Recording a string of transactions is trivial for a modern computer, but mining is difficult, because bitcoin's software makes the process artificially time consuming. Without the added difficulty, someone could spoof a transaction to enrich themselves or bankrupt someone else. They could log it in the blockchain and pile so many trivial transactions on top of it that untangling the fraud would become impossible. By the same token, it would be easy to insert fraudulent transactions into past blocks. The network would become a sprawling, spammy mess of competing ledgers, and bitcoin would be worthless.
Combining "proof of work" with other cryptographic techniques was Satoshi's breakthrough. Bitcoin's software adjusts the difficulty miners face in order to limit the network to one new, 1-megabyte block of transactions every 10 minutes. That way the volume of transactions is digestible. The network has time to vet the new block and the ledger that precedes it, and everyone can reach a consensus about the status quo. In there is a "fork" – the chain splits into divergent versions – the longest chain is considered the most valid, since the most work has gone into it.
Here is a slightly more technical description of how mining works. The network of miners, who are scattered across the globe and not bound to each other by personal or professional ties, receives the latest batch of transaction data. They run the data through a cryptographic algorithm that generates a "hash," a string of numbers and letters that serves to verify the information's validity, but does not reveal the information itself. (In reality this ideal vision of decentralized mining is no longer accurate, with industrial-scale mining farms and powerful mining pools forming an oligopoly – more on that below.)
Given the hash 000000000000000000c2c4d562265f272bd55d64f1a7c22ffeb66e15e826ca30, you cannot know what transactions the relevant block (#480504) contains. You can, however, take a bunch of data purporting to be block #480504 and make sure that it has not been tampered with. If one number were out of place, no matter how insignificant, the data would generate a totally different hash. If you run the declaration of independence through a hash calculator, you get 839f561caa4b466c84e2b4809afe116c76a465ce5da68c3370f5c36bd3f67350. Delete the period after "submitted to a candid world," and you get 800790e4fd445ca4c5e3092f9884cdcd4cf536f735ca958b93f60f82f23f97c4. Which is more than a little different.
This technology allows the bitcoin network to instantly check the validity of a block. It would be incredibly time consuming to comb through the entire ledger to make sure that the person mining the most recent batch of transactions hasn't tried anything funny. Instead the previous block's hash appears within the new block. If the minutest detail had been altered in the previous block, that hash would change. Even if the alteration was 20,000 blocks back in the chain, that block's hash would set off a cascade of new hashes and tip off the network.
Generating a hash is not really work, though. The process is so quick and easy that bad actors could still spam the network and perhaps, given enough computing power, pass off fraudulent transactions a few blocks back in the chain. So the bitcoin protocol requires proof of work. (See also, How Does Bitcoin Mining Work?)
It does so by throwing miners a curve ball – their hash must be below a certain target. That's why block #480504's hash starts with a long string of zeroes – it's tiny. Since every string of data will generate one and only one hash, the quest for a sufficiently small one involves adding nonces ("numbers used once") to the end of the data. So a miner will run [thedata]. The hash is too big, try again. [thedata]1. Too big. [thedata]2. Finally, [thedata]93452 yields a hash beginning with the requisite number of zeroes. The mined block will be broadcast to the network to receive confirmations, which take another hour or so – though occasionally much longer – to process. (Again, this description is simplified. Blocks are not hashed in their entirety, but broken up into more efficient structures called Merkle trees.)
Depending on the kind of traffic the network is receiving, bitcoin's protocol will require a longer or shorter string of zeroes, adjusting the difficulty to hit a rate of one new block every 10 minutes. Current difficulty is around 2.603 trillion, up from 1 in 2009.
Mining is intensive, requiring big, expensive rigs and a lot of electricity to power them. And it's competitive – there's no telling what nonce will work, so the goal is to plow through them as quickly as possible. Miners have begun to form pools, divvying the rewards up among themselves. And the rewards are juicy. Every time a new block is mined, the successful miner receives a bunch of newly created bitcoin – at first it was 50, then it halved to 25, now it is 12.5 ($107,500 at the time of writing). The reward will continue to halve every 210,000 blocks – around four years – until it hits zero, at which point all 21 million bitcoin will have been mined, and miners will depend solely on fees to maintain the network.
That miners have begun to organize themselves into pools worries some. If a pool exceeds 50% of the network's mining power, its members could potentially spend coins, reverse the transactions, and spend them again. They could also block others' transactions. That could spell the end of bitcoin, but even a so-called 51% attack would probably not enable the bad actors to reverse old transactions, because the proof of work requirement makes that process so labor intensive. To go back and alter the blockchain at leisure (a time-consuming process under any circumstances), a pool would need to control such a large majority of the network that it would probably be pointless. When you control the whole currency, who is there to trade with?
A 51% attack is a financially suicidal proposition, from miners' perspective. When Ghash.io, a mining pool, reached half of the network's computing power in 2014, it voluntarily broke itself up in order to maintain confidence in bitcoin's value. Other actors, such as governments, might find such an attack interesting, though.
Another source of concern related to miners is the practical tendency to concentrate in parts of the world where electricity is cheap, such as China – or increasingly, following a Chinese crackdown in early 2018, Quebec.
Keys and Wallets
Bitcoin ownership boils down to two numbers, a public key and a private key. A rough analogy is a username (public key) and a password (private key). A hash of the public key, called an address, is the one displayed on the blockchain (using the hash provides an extra layer of security). For you to receive bitcoin, it's enough for the sender to know your address. The public key is derived from the private key, which you need to send bitcoin to another address. IThe system makes it easy for you to receive money, but requires you to verify your identity to send it.
To access bitcoin, you use a wallet, which is a set of keys. These can take different forms, from third-party web applications offering insurance and debit cards, to QR codes printed on pieces of paper. The most important distinction is between "hot" wallets, which are connected to the internet and therefore vulnerable to hacking, and "cold" wallets, which are not connected to the internet.
Many users opt to use exchanges such as Coinbase, putting the exchange in control of the private keys.
How does Bitcoin work?
This is a question that often causes confusion. Here's a quick explanation!
The basics for a new user
As a new user, you can get started with Bitcoin without understanding the technical details. Once you have installed a Bitcoin wallet on your computer or mobile phone, it will generate your first Bitcoin address and you can create more whenever you need one. You can disclose your addresses to your friends so that they can pay you or vice versa. In fact, this is pretty similar to how email works, except that Bitcoin addresses should only be used once.
Balances - block chain
The block chain is a shared public ledger on which the entire Bitcoin network relies. All confirmed transactions are included in the block chain. This way, Bitcoin wallets can calculate their spendable balance and new transactions can be verified to be spending bitcoins that are actually owned by the spender. The integrity and the chronological order of the block chain are enforced with cryptography.
Transactions - private keys
A transaction is a transfer of value between Bitcoin wallets that gets included in the block chain. Bitcoin wallets keep a secret piece of data called a private key or seed, which is used to sign transactions, providing a mathematical proof that they have come from the owner of the wallet. The signature also prevents the transaction from being altered by anybody once it has been issued. All transactions are broadcast between users and usually begin to be confirmed by the network in the following 10 minutes, through a process called mining.
Processing - mining
Mining is a distributed consensus system that is used to confirm waiting transactions by including them in the block chain. It enforces a chronological order in the block chain, protects the neutrality of the network, and allows different computers to agree on the state of the system. To be confirmed, transactions must be packed in a block that fits very strict cryptographic rules that will be verified by the network. These rules prevent previous blocks from being modified because doing so would invalidate all following blocks. Mining also creates the equivalent of a competitive lottery that prevents any individual from easily adding new blocks consecutively in the block chain. This way, no individuals can control what is included in the block chain or replace parts of the block chain to roll back their own spends.
Going down the rabbit hole
This is only a very short and concise summary of the system. If you want to get into the details, you can read the original paper that describes the system's design, read the developer documentation, and explore the Bitcoin wiki.
How Bitcoin Works
The genesis of Bitcoin is the stuff of internet legend. In 2008, a person (or persons) working under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto published a document outlining the feasibility of the Bitcoin concept. Nakamoto mentioned the 2008 financial crisis — as well as the failures of government-backed currencies and corruption of existing banking systems — as a motivating factor for inventing a new currency.
Bitcoin would be, according to its creators, a purer form of money, working for regular citizens of the world instead of being leveraged against them by the powers that be.
In 2009, Nakamoto released the first Bitcoin application, and also "mined" the first bitcoins for circulation. Then it was just a matter of spreading the word about this new currency.
To use Bitcoin, you need a Bitcoin wallet, which encrypts and maintains your bitcoin balance on your computer, smartphone or in the cloud. Then you can fill your wallet with bitcoins by using your bank account, credit card or other form of payment.
After that, it's just a matter of finding a vendor that will accept Bitcoin as payment. Although pickings were slim when Bitcoin first launched, these days there are many merchants that accept these newfangled coins. That includes restaurants, clothing stores, dentists and many others. Some people even use Bitcoin for property rental and vehicle purchases. The gift card website Gyft accepts payment in Bitcoin, letting you turn Bitcoin into store credit that can be spent at every major retailer and restaurant in America.
If you follow financial news at all, you already know that Bitcoin isn't just used for goods and services. A lot of the hype around Bitcoin has centered around speculation. That is, people are using online currency exchanges like Coinbase to invest their real-world dollars and yen in Bitcoin hoping that the latter will appreciate in value. Already, fortunes have been made (and surrendered) as the value of Bitcoin has careened all over the charts.
But how does this invisible, virtual currency wield so much financial power? How can a brand-new type of money be a workable concept? Well, it's complicated. Keep reading and you'll see how Bitcoin comes to life.
Bitcoin's creator has never revealed his or her or their true identity. According to the Bitcoin website, after working on the project's development for a few years, the mystery founder(s) moved on, leaving it to the community that had grown around the concept.
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Your search engine does not find any satisfactory results for searches. It is too weak. Also, the server of bing is often off
I created a yahoo/email account long ago but I lost access to it; can y'all delete all my yahoo/yahoo account except for my newest YaAccount
I want all my lost access yahoo account 'delete'; Requesting supporter for these old account deletion; 'except' my Newest yahoo account this Account don't delete! Because I don't want it interfering my online 'gamble' /games/business/data/ Activity , because the computer/security program might 'scure' my Information and detect theres other account; then secure online activities/ business securing from my suspicion because of my other account existing will make the security program be 'Suspicious' until I'm 'secure'; and if I'm gambling online 'Depositing' then I need those account 'delete' because the insecurity 'Suspicioun' will program the casino game 'Programs' securities' to be 'secure' then it'll be 'unfair' gaming and I'll lose because of the insecurity can be a 'Excuse'. Hope y'all understand my explanation!
I want all my lost access yahoo account 'delete'; Requesting supporter for these old account deletion; 'except' my Newest yahoo account this Account don't delete! Because I don't want it interfering my online 'gamble' /games/business/data/ Activity , because the computer/security program might 'scure' my Information and detect theres other account; then secure online activities/ business securing from my suspicion because of my other account existing will make the security program be 'Suspicious' until I'm 'secure'; and if I'm gambling online 'Depositing' then I need those account 'delete' because the insecurity 'Suspicioun' will program the casino game 'Programs' securities' to be… more
chithidio@Yahoo.com
i dont know what happened but i can not search anything.
Golf handicap tracker, why can't I get to it?
Why do I get redirected on pc and mobile device?
Rahyaftco@yahoo.com
RYAN RAHSAD BELL literally means
Question on a link
In the search for Anaïs Nin, one of the first few links shows a picture of a man. Why? Since Nin is a woman, I can’t figure out why. Can you show some reason for this? Who is he? If you click on the picture a group of pictures of Nin and no mention of that man. Is it an error?
Repair the Yahoo Search App.
Yahoo Search App from the Google Play Store on my Samsung Galaxy S8+ phone stopped working on May 18, 2018.
I went to the Yahoo Troubleshooting page but the article that said to do a certain 8 steps to fix the problem with Yahoo Services not working and how to fix the problem. Of course they didn't work.
I contacted Samsung thru their Samsung Tutor app on my phone. I gave their Technican access to my phone to see if there was a problem with my phone that stopped the Yahoo Search App from working. He went to Yahoo and I signed in so he could try to fix the Yahoo Search App not working. He also used another phone, installed the app from the Google Play Store to see if the app would do any kind of search thru the app. The Yahoo Search App just wasn't working.
I also had At&t try to help me because I have UVERSE for my internet service. My internet was working perfectly. Their Technical Support team member checked the Yahoo Search App and it wouldn't work for him either.
We can go to www.yahoo.com and search for any topic or website. It's just the Yahoo Search App that won't allow anyone to do web searches at all.
I let Google know that the Yahoo Search App installed from their Google Play Store had completely stopped working on May 18, 2018.
I told them that Yahoo has made sure that their Yahoo members can't contact them about anything.
I noticed that right after I accepted the agreement that said Oath had joined with Verizon I started having the problem with the Yahoo Search App.
No matter what I search for or website thru the Yahoo Search App it says the following after I searched for
www.att.com.
WEBPAGE NOT AVAILABLE
This webpage at gttp://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0geJGq8BbkrgALEMMITE5jylu=X3oDMTEzcTjdWsyBGNvbG8DYmyxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDTkFQUEMwxzEEc2VjA3NylRo=10/Ru=https%3a%2f%2fwww.att.att.com%2f/Rk=2/Es=plkGNRAB61_XKqFjTEN7J8cXA-
could not be loaded because:
net::ERR_CLEARTEXT_NOT_PERMITTED
I tried to search for things like www.homedepot.com. The same thing happened. It would say WEBPAGE NOT AVAILABLE. The only thing that changed were all the upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols.
Then it would again say
could not be loaded because:
net::ERR_CLEARTEXT_NOT_PERMITTED
This is the same thing that happened when Samsung and At&t tried to do any kind of searches thru the Yahoo Search App.
Yahoo needs to fix the problem with their app.
Yahoo Search App from the Google Play Store on my Samsung Galaxy S8+ phone stopped working on May 18, 2018.
I went to the Yahoo Troubleshooting page but the article that said to do a certain 8 steps to fix the problem with Yahoo Services not working and how to fix the problem. Of course they didn't work.
I contacted Samsung thru their Samsung Tutor app on my phone. I gave their Technican access to my phone to see if there was a problem with my phone that stopped the Yahoo Search App from working. He went to Yahoo and… more
How Bitcoin Mining Works
Last updated: 29th January 2018
When you hear about bitcoin "mining," you envisage coins being dug out of the ground. But bitcoin isn't physical, so why do we call it mining?
Because it's similar to gold mining in that the bitcoins exist in the protocol's design (just as the gold exists underground), but they haven't been brought out into the light yet (just as the gold hasn't yet been dug up). The bitcoin protocol stipulates that 21 million bitcoins will exist at some point. What "miners" do is bring them out into the light, a few at a time.
They get to do this as a reward for creating blocks of validated transactions and including them in the blockchain.
Backtracking a bit, let's talk about "nodes." A node is a powerful computer that runs the bitcoin software and helps to keep bitcoin running by participating in the relay of information. Anyone can run a node, you just download the bitcoin software (free) and leave a certain port open (the drawback is that it consumes energy and storage space – the network at time of writing takes up about 145GB). Nodes spread bitcoin transactions around the network. One node will send information to a few nodes that it knows, who will relay the information to nodes that they know, etc. That way it ends up getting around the whole network pretty quickly.
Some nodes are mining nodes (usually referred to as "miners"). These group outstanding transactions into blocks and add them to the blockchain. How do they do this? By solving a complex mathematical puzzle that is part of the bitcoin program, and including the answer in the block. The puzzle that needs solving is to find a number that, when combined with the data in the block and passed through a hash function, produces a result that is within a certain range. This is much harder than it sounds.
(For trivia lovers, this number is called a "nonce", which is a concatenation of "number used once." In the case of bitcoin, the nonce is an integer between 0 and 4,294,967,296 .)
Solving the puzzle
How do they find this number? By guessing at random. The hash function makes it impossible to predict what the output will be. So, miners guess the mystery number and apply the hash function to the combination of that guessed number and the data in the block. The resulting hash has to start with a pre-established number of zeroes. There's no way of knowing which number will work, because two consecutive integers will give wildly varying results. What's more, there may be several nonces that produce the desired result, or there may be none (in which case the miners keep trying, but with a different block configuration).
The first miner to get a resulting hash within the desired range announces its victory to the rest of the network. All the other miners immediately stop work on that block and start trying to figure out the mystery number for the next one. As a reward for its work, the victorious miner gets some new bitcoin.
At the time of writing, the reward is 12.5 bitcoins, which at time of writing is worth almost $200,000.
Although it's not nearly as cushy a deal as it sounds. There are a lot of mining nodes competing for that reward, and it is a question of luck and computing power (the more guessing calculations you can perform, the luckier you are).
Also, the costs of being a mining node are considerable, not only because of the powerful hardware needed (if you have a faster processor than your competitors, you have a better chance of finding the correct number before they do), but also because of the large amounts of electricity that running these processors consumes.
And, the number of bitcoins awarded as a reward for solving the puzzle will decrease. It's 12.5 now, but it halves every four years or so (the next one is expected in 2020-21). The value of bitcoin relative to cost of electricity and hardware could go up over the next few years to partially compensate this reduction, but it's not certain.
The difficulty of the calculation (the required number of zeroes at the beginning of the hash string) is adjusted frequently, so that it takes on average about 10 minutes to process a block.
Why 10 minutes? That is the amount of time that the bitcoin developers think is necessary for a steady and diminishing flow of new coins until the maximum number of 21 million is reached (expected some time in 2140).
If you've made it this far, then congratulations! There is still so much more to explain about the system, but at least now you have an idea of the broad outline of the genius of the programming and the concept. For the first time we have a system that allows for convenient digital transfers in a decentralized, trust-free and tamper-proof way. The repercussions could be huge.
Authored by Noelle Acheson. Bitcoin and bitcoin mining images via Shutterstock.
Still Don't Get Bitcoin? Here's an Explanation Even a Five-Year-Old Will Understand
If you still can't figure out what the heck a bitcoin is, this simple explanation for a five-year-old may help you .
We're sitting on a park bench. It's a great day. I have one apple with me, I give it to you.
You now have one apple and I have zero. That was simple, right?
Let's look closely at what happened:
My apple was physically put into your hand. You know it happened. I was there, you were there – you touched it.
We didn't need a third person there to help us make the transfer. We didn't need to pull in Uncle Tommy (who's a famous judge) to sit with us on the bench and confirm that the apple went from me to you.
The apple's yours! I can't give you another apple because I don't have any left. I can't control it anymore. The apple left my possession completely. You have full control over that apple now. You can give it to your friend if you want, and then that friend can give it to his friend, and so on.
So that's what an in-person exchange looks like. I guess it's really the same, whether I'm giving you a banana, a book, a quarter, or a dollar bill …
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Back to apples!
Now, let's say I have one digital apple. Here, I'll give you my digital apple. Ah! Now it gets interesting.
How do you know that digital apple which used to be mine, is now yours, and only yours? Think about it for a second. It's more complicated, right? How do you know that I didn't send that apple to Uncle Tommy as an email attachment first? Or your friend Joe? Or my friend Lisa too?
Maybe I made a couple of copies of that digital apple on my computer. Maybe I put it up on the internet and one million people downloaded it.
As you see, this digital exchange is a bit of a problem. Sending digital apples doesn't look like sending physical apples.
Some brainy computer scientists actually have a name for this problem: it's called the double-spending problem. But don't worry about it. All you need to know is that it's confused them for quite some time and they've never solved it. Until now.
But let's try to think of a solution on our own.
Maybe these digital apples need to be tracked in a ledger. It's basically a book where you track all transactions – an accounting book.
This ledger, since it's digital, needs to live in its own world and have someone in charge of it.
Just like World of Warcraft, say. Blizzard, the guys who created the online game, have a "digital ledger" of all the rare flaming fire swords that exist in their system. So, cool, someone like them could keep track of our digital apples. Awesome – we solved it!
There's a bit of a problem though:
1) What if some guy over at Blizzard created more? He could just add a couple of digital apples to his balance whenever he wants!
2) It's not the same as when we were on the bench that day. It was just you and me then. Going through Blizzard is like pulling in Uncle Tommy (a third-party) out of court (did I mention he's a famous judge?) for all our park bench transactions. How can I just hand over my digital apple to you in the usual way?
Is there any way to closely replicate our park bench transaction digitally? Seems kinda tough …
The Solution
What if we gave this ledger to everybody? Instead of the ledger living on a Blizzard computer, it'll live in everybody's computers. All the transactions that have ever happened, from all time, in digital apples, will be recorded in it.
You can't cheat it. I can't send you digital apples I don't have, because then it wouldn't sync up with everybody else in the system. It'd be a tough system to beat. Especially if it got really big.
Plus, it's not controlled by one person, so I know there's no one that can just decide to give himself more digital apples. The rules of the system were already defined at the beginning.
And the code and rules are open source – kinda like the software used in your mom's Android phone. Or kinda like Wikipedia. It's there for smart people to maintain, secure, improve, and check.
You could participate in this network too – updating the ledger and making sure it all checks out. For the trouble, you could get like 25 digital apples as a reward. In fact, that's the only way to create more digital apples in the system.
I simplified quite a bit … But that system I explained exists. It's called the Bitcoin protocol. And those digital apples are the bitcoins within the system. Fancy! So, did you see what happened?
What does the public ledger enable?
1) It's open source, remember? The total number of apples was defined in the public ledger at the beginning. I know the exact amount that exists. Within the system, I know they are limited (scarce).
2) When I make an exchange I now know that digital apple certifiably left my possession and is now completely yours. I used to not be able to say that about digital things. It will be updated and verified by the public ledger.
3) Because it's a public ledger, I didn't need Uncle Tommy (third-party) to make sure I didn't cheat, or make extra copies for myself, or send apples twice, or thrice…
Within the system, the exchange of a digital apple is now just like the exchange of a physical one. It's now as good as seeing a physical apple leave my hand and drop into your pocket. Just like on the park bench, the exchange involved two people only. You and me , we didn't need Uncle Tommy there to make it valid.
In other words, it behaves like a physical object.
But you know what's cool? It's still digital.
We can now deal with 1,000 apples, or 1 million apples, or even .0000001 apples. I can send it with a click of a button, and I can still drop it in your digital pocket if I was in Nicaragua and you were all the way in New York.
I can even make other digital things ride on top of these digital apples! It's digital after all. Maybe I can attach some text on it – a digital note. Or maybe I can attach more important things; like say a contract, or a stock certificate, or an ID card …
So this is great! How should we treat or value these "digital apples"? They're quite useful aren't they?
Well, a lot of people are arguing over it now. There's debate between this and that economic school, between politicians, between programmers. Don't listen to all of them though. Some people are smart; some are misinformed. Some say the system is worth a lot; some say it's actually worth zero. Some guy actually put a hard number on it: $1,300 per apple. Some say it's digital gold; some say it's a currency. Others say they're just like tulips. Some people say it'll change the world; some say it's just a fad.
I have my own opinion about it, but that's a story for another time.
Hey kid, you now know more about Bitcoin than most.
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How Bitcoin Works
Bitcoin For Dummies
Bitcoin is changing the way people think about money by planting a seed of doubt in people’s minds — in a positive and thought-provoking way. Mind you, given the financial crises over the past decade, it’s understandable that some people are trying to come up with new and creative solutions for a better economy. Bitcoin, with its transparency and decentralization, may prove to be a powerful tool in achieving that goal.
One thing bitcoin does is bypass the current financial system and could therefore potentially provide services to unbanked and underbanked nations all around the world.
Whereas most people in the Western world find it normal to have a bank account, the story is quite different elsewhere. Some countries in Africa, for example, have an unbanked population of anywhere from 50 to 90 percent. Do these people have less right to open and own a bank account than Americans or Europeans do? Absolutely not, but doing so may come with rules so strict as to be unobtainable for many citizens.
For a while now, society has been evolving toward a cashless ecosystem: More and more people use bank and credit cards to pay for goods and services both online and offline, for example. Mobile payments — paying for stuff with your phone — are now on the rise, which may become a threat to card transactions. Bitcoin has been available on mobile device for years now.
People are slowly starting to grasp the concept of blockchain technology’s potential and future uses: A blockchain can do pretty much anything; you just have to find the right parts of the puzzles and fit them together.
Here are some examples of what bitcoin technology is capable of:
- Taking on the remittance market (transfers of funds between two parties) and coming out on top in every aspect.
- Sending money from one end of the world to the other end in only a few seconds.
- Converting money to any local currency you desire.
- Overriding the need for a bank account, making bitcoin an incredibly powerful tool in unbanked and underbanked regions of the world.
What if you live in an unbanked region and have no reliable access to the Internet? There’s a solution for that as well: Some services allow you to send text messages to any mobile phone number in the world in exchange for bitcoin or a few other digital currencies. Once again, bitcoin proves itself a very powerful tool in underbanked and unbanked regions of the world.
Perhaps the most impressive showcasing of what bitcoin can do is the bitcoin network itself. All transactions are logged and monitored in real time, giving users unprecedented access to financial data from all corners of the world. Furthermore, the blockchain enables you to track payments’ origins and destinations, even as money is on the move in real time. Such valuable insight will hopefully be adopted in the current financial infrastructure, even though there may be a period of adjustment while that takes place.
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