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What's this?
Bitcoin is a virtual currency created in 2009 created by one or more hackers under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. Unlike other currencies, Bitcoin does not have a central bank behind it that distributes new money but is fundamentally based on two principles: a network of nodes, ie PCs, which manage it in a distributed, peer-to-peer manner; and the use of strong cryptography to validate and secure transactions. There are 21 million Bitcoins available on the net while those actually in circulation are about 9 million. The value of Bitcoin has gone from 0 (in 2009) to 1200 dollars (the peak of last November). According to the Financial Times, total trade reached $ 10 billion versus $ 150 million a year earlier.
How to use
To be able to buy Bitcoin it is necessary to open a virtual wallet / account and then connect to the numerous sites that offer virtual currency in exchange for money (payment by bank transfer, rechargeable cards). Bitcoins can be traded or spent (they are accepted by numerous businesses both virtual and physical).
Insurance
Being virtual money, Bitcoin can be stolen (for example by a hacker attack) or lost (PC hard disk malfunction). A London-based company offers a Bitcoin insurance coverage tool. The offer includes a sort of "safety deposit box" which protects against hackers and which is also covered by insurance.
Differences with legal tender currencies
Unlike other fiat currencies, bitcoins have a unique feature: no one can control their value due to the decentralized nature of the currency's creation method, although doubts have been raised about decentralization, such as from Elon Musk who said is actually "highly centralized", describing the incident of the flooding of a single Xinjiang coal mine which caused, according to various news outlets, a decrease in the computing power or hashrate of the Bitcoin network by 35%. In Bitcoin the amount of currency in circulation is limited a priori; moreover, it is perfectly predictable and therefore known by all its users in advance. Inflation from currency in circulation cannot therefore be used by a central body to redistribute wealth among users.
Transfers are defined as a change in ownership of the currency and are made without the need for an external entity to supervise the parties. This exchange method makes it impossible to cancel the transaction and therefore re-appropriate the coins that have changed ownership. The Bitcoin client transmits the transaction to its closest nodes, which verify the authenticity and availability of the funds and retransmit it in turn to the nodes to which they are connected.
The total number of bitcoins tends asymptotically to the limit of 21 million. The availability of new coins grows as a geometric series every 4 years; in 2013, half of the possible coins were generated and for 2017 they will be three quarters. In this way, in about 136 years (after 33 "halving" interspersed with about 4 years between them) [29] all the coins will be generated. As that date approaches and assuming that the demand for bitcoins will grow more than proportionally to their availability, bitcoins will likely suffer a deflation in value (i.e. an increase in real value) due to the scarcity of new money. In any case, bitcoins are divisible up to the eighth decimal place (with a total therefore of 2.1 · 1015 units), allowing a complete adjustment of the value in a deflationary environment [30]. According to the developers, in an environment with bitcoin scarcity, nodes, instead of financing themselves by creating new bitcoins, will profit from their ability to carry out transactions, thus competing on prices and keeping them low.
Official currency
In the Republic of El Salvador, bitcoin has been the official currency of the Central American country since 2021.
Anonymity
The addresses contain no information about their owners and are generally anonymous. The addresses in readable form are random sequences of characters and digits long on average 33 characters, which always start with 1, by 3 or with bc1, of the form 1NAfBQUL4d2N7uu1iKxjwF8dESXTT3AKcq. Users can have an arbitrary number of Bitcoin addresses, and in fact it is possible to generate them at will without any limit as their generation costs little calculation time (equivalent to the generation of a public / private key pair) and does not require any contact with other nodes in the network. Creating a new key pair for each transaction helps maintain anonymity.
The algorithm used by Bitcoin to generate the keys is the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA).
Where to buy
coinbase ->https://www.coinbase.com
