Bitcoin: Cheat Sheet | Finance. Could Bitcoin be the global online currency? With the rapid growth of eCommerce over the last decade, online payment has become a hugely influential area. This niche has made fortunes for credit card companies, and services like Paypal, providing the ability for real currency to be used online with relative ease. With the estimated total value of eCommerce approaching a trillion US$, there is another solution that may be even more useful. Perhaps it is time for a global online currency? Bitcoin is such a currency, created in 2009 by Satoshi Nakamoto. It is an anonymous, open source and peer to peer fiat currency. There is no central authority that issues new Bitcoins or tracks transactions, instead this is handled by the CPUs of the distributed nodes of the network.
But how does this work? Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, securing itself via automated encryption. How it works New Bitcoins are introduced slowly by users running nodes for the network as they create blocks for the system. Cryptocurrency. When the virtual currency bitcoin was released, in January 2009, it appeared to be an interesting way for people to trade among themselves in a secure, low-cost, and private fashion. The Bitcoin network, designed by an unknown programmer with the handle “Satoshi Nakamoto,” used a decentralized peer-to-peer system to verify transactions, which meant that people could exchange goods and services electronically, and anonymously, without having to rely on third parties like banks. Its medium of exchange, the bitcoin, was an invented currency that people could earn—or, in Bitcoin’s jargon, “mine”—by lending their computers’ resources to service the needs of the Bitcoin network.
Once in existence, bitcoins could also be bought and sold for dollars or other currencies on online exchanges. Yet over the past year and a half Bitcoin has become, for some, much more. Bitcoin is not going to make government-backed currencies obsolete. Thing Reviewed: Bitcoin www.bitcoin.org. What Bitcoin Is, and Why It Matters. Unlike other currencies, Bitcoin is underwritten not by a government, but by a clever cryptographic scheme.
For now, little can be bought with bitcoins, and the new currency is still a long way from competing with the dollar. But this explainer lays out what Bitcoin is, why it matters, and what needs to happen for it to succeed. Where does Bitcoin come from? In 2008, a programmer known as Satoshi Nakamoto—a name believed to be an alias—posted a paper outlining Bitcoin’s design to a cryptography e-mail list. Then, in early 2009, he (or she) released software that can be used to exchange bitcoins using the scheme. That software is now maintained by a volunteer open-source community coordinated by four core developers. “Satoshi’s a bit of a mysterious figure,” says Jeff Garzik, a member of that core team and founder of Bitcoin Watch, which tracks the Bitcoin economy.
How does Bitcoin work? The Basics A Bitcoin address looks something like this: 15VjRaDX9zpbA8LVnbrCAFzrVzN7ixHNsC. Security. Bitcoin, the Peer-to-Peer Currency that Hopes to Change the World - Industry. Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer currency with no centralized authority, that provides some level of anonymity to its users. Those behind it claim that it has the potential to change the way our economies work. But you already knew all of that: Bitcoin has been around for quite a few years, but in the last few months it has received more attention and discussion than in its whole lifespan.
This attention, in tandem with the limited supply of currency, has seen huge, leaping increases in the value of each Bitcoin in USD. By now, most of us know at least a little about it. But how did it begin, and why? The Genesis Block Bitcoin was officially announced by its creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, in January of 2009. A “block” contains a record of transactions and forms part of a chain that represents every transaction ever made over the Bitcoin network. This reward rate is designed to decrease over time. Today, only a few months later, Bitcoin is worth US$14.41.
Satoshi Nakamoto Why Bitcoin? Anonymity? What is Bitcoin? - We Use Coins.