What is Bitcoin
Bitcoin is a digital currency which aims to do away with all the problems we have paying for things online. You may think that the system we have is pretty good but everything we buy today has to go through a bank or credit card company who take a cut of our transaction and rely on our trust that they’ll do everything right. After a while those payments start to build up and added. Then comes security, you have to trust your card company to keep your details safe. Many people have tried a payment system that eliminates this middle man but there’s a problem, how do you prove that you have paid for something or even you have that money at all without someone vouching for you. Its so serious that it’s called the double spending problem. Then in 2008 a solution was offered by an anonymous programmer going by the name of satoshi nakamoto, he left a paper on a popular cryptography blog which proposed a system of currency that solved all these problems.
His proposal was that instead of a bank or credit card company recording every transaction in one central ledger, all of the users would recorded all of the transactions at the same time as a result any attempt to fool the community would be noticed and the payment rejected. No one user, government or bank can force a fee on a payment or control its flow. The result is a cheaper, faster and simpler way to spend money even across national borders.
Within months of the proposal it was being used to buy and sell goods although not always from the most scrupulous of traders but it’s not all shady business some shopping sites still accept Bitcoin with which you can buy chocolates in Switzerland or that shirt you always wanted from Hawaii.
As you might have heard there are problems. While some are profiting from getting involved early others are losing out from this volatile and young market and people are founding companies to buy up lots of bitcoins. But is it’s deigned in a way that it has a limited amount this circulation might cause problems down the road. There’s so much uncertainty around Bitcoin. Some people genuinely think this is the future others are terrified. But many from both sides agree that I’d we could get Bitcoin to work or something like it if we can trust a digital currency to work without a middle man then they way the economy functions could be transformed for the better.
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