What is Bitcoin ? How it Works ?

Bitcoin is a new currency that was created in 2009 by an unknown person using the alias Satoshi Nakamoto. Transactions are made with no middlemen – meaning, no banks! Bitcoin can be used to book hotels on Expedia, shop for furniture on Overstock
and buy Xbox games. But much of the hype is about getting rich by trading it. The price of bitcoin skyrocketed into the thousands in 2017.

Bitcoin was the first crypto coin currency ever invented. No one knows exactly who created it – cryptocurrencies are designed for maximum anonymity – but bitcoins first appeared in 2009 from a developer supposedly named Satoshi Nakamoto.

He has since disappeared and left behind a Bitcoin fortune.
Because Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency to exist, all digital currencies created since then are called Altcoins, or alternative coins. Litecoin, Peercoin, Feathercoin, Ethereum and hundreds of other coins are all Altcoins because they are not Bitcoin.

One of the advantages of Bitcoin is that it can be stored offline on a person's local hardware. That process is called cold storage and it protects the currency from being taken by others. When the currency is stored on the internet somewhere (hot storage), there is a high risk of it being stolen.

On the flip side, if a person loses access to the hardware that contains the bitcoins, the currency is simply gone forever. It's estimated that as much as $30 billion in bitcoins have been lost or misplaced by miners and investors. Nonetheless, Bitcoins remain incredibly popular as the most famous cryptocurrency over time.

Why Bitcoins?

Bitcoins can be used to buy merchandise anonymously. In addition, international payments are easy and cheap because bitcoins are not tied to any country or subject to regulation. Small businesses may like them because there are no credit card fees. Some people just buy bitcoins as an investment, hoping that they’ll go up in value.

How Bitcoin Works?

Bitcoins are completely virtual coins designed to be 'self-contained' for their value, with no need for banks to move and store the money. Once you own bitcoins, they behave like physical gold coins: they possess value and trade just as if they were nuggets of gold in your pocket. You can use your bitcoins to purchase goods and services online, or you can tuck them away and hope that their value increases over the years.

Bitcoins are traded from one personal 'wallet' to another. A wallet is a small personal database that you store on your computer drive (i.e cold storage), on your smartphone, on your tablet, or somewhere in the cloud (hot storage).

For all intents, bitcoins are forgery-resistant. It is so computationally-intensive to create a bitcoin, it isn't financially worth it for counterfeiters to manipulate the system.

Acquiring Bitcoins

Buy on an Exchange
Many marketplaces called “bitcoin exchanges” allow people to buy or sell bitcoins using different currencies. Coinbase is a leading exchange, along with Bitstamp and Bitfinex. But security can be a concern: bitcoins worth tens of millions of dollars were stolen from Bitfinex when it was hacked in 2016.

Transfers
People can send bitcoins to each other using mobile apps or their computers. It’s similar to sending cash digitally.

Mining
People compete to “mine” bitcoins using computers to solve complex math puzzles. This is how bitcoins are created. Currently, a winner is rewarded with 12.5 bitcoins roughly every 10 minutes.

Owning Bitcoins

Bitcoins are stored in a “digital wallet,” which exists either in the cloud or on a user’s computer. The wallet is a kind of virtual bank account that allows users to send or receive bitcoins, pay for goods or save their money. Unlike bank accounts, bitcoin wallets are not insured by the FDIC.

Anonymity

Though each bitcoin transaction is recorded in a public log, names of buyers and sellers are never revealed – only their wallet IDs. While that keeps bitcoin users’ transactions private, it also lets them buy or sell anything without easily tracing it back to them. That’s why it has become the currency of choice for people online buying drugs or other illicit activities.

Bitcoin Values and Regulations

A single bitcoin varies in value daily; you can check places like Coindesk to see today's value. There is more than two billion dollars worth of bitcoins in existence. Bitcoins will stop being created when the total number reaches 21 billion coins, which will be sometime around the year 2040. As of 2017, more than half of those bitcoins had been created.

Bitcoin currency is completely unregulated and completely decentralized. There is no national bank or national mint, and there is no depositor insurance coverage. The currency itself is self-contained and un-collateral, meaning that there is no precious metal behind the bitcoins; the value of each bitcoin resides within each bitcoin itself.

Bitcoins are stewarded by 'miners', the massive network of people who contribute their personal computers to the Bitcoin network. Miners act as a swarm of ledger keepers and auditors for Bitcoin transactions. Miners are paid for their accounting work by earning new bitcoins for each week they contribute to the network.

Bitcoin Security

They are as secure as possessing physical precious metal. Just like holding a bag of gold coins, a person who takes reasonable precautions will be safe from having their personal cache stolen by hackers.

As mentioned earlier, your bitcoin wallet can be stored online (i.e. a cloud service) or offline (a hard drive or USB stick). The offline method is more hacker-resistant and absolutely recommended for anyone who owns more than 1 or 2 bitcoins but it is not without risk.

More than hacker intrusion, the real loss risk with bitcoins revolves around not backing up your wallet with a failsafe copy. There is an important .dat file that is updated every time you receive or send bitcoins, so this .dat file should be copied and stored as a duplicate backup every day you do bitcoin transactions.