Bitcoin is a kind of digital money or electronic currency (crypto-currency). It implies an innovative network of payment that offers worldwide payments and fast peer-to-peer transactions with low processing charges. It is an open-source payment network so that anybody can have its access. This payment system is designed publicly and nobody is having the authority to control it. It does not encourage any intermediates in transactions. Instead, it offers only direct user-transactions. The network nodes monitor and verify each and every transaction corresponding to that particular network and holds the details of those verified transactions in Blockchains.
A Blockchain is nothing but a distributed public ledger that accepts bitcoin as its account unit. Users can access bitcoins from anywhere in the world. When compared to gold, bitcoin ensures seven times higher volatility.
History of Bitcoin:
On 31st October 2008, bitcoin was first introduced by programmers belonging to Satoshi Nakamoto to a cryptography mailing list. In 2009, bitcoin was legally announced as a free and open-source software. A programmer named Hal Finney was the first person who adopted, supported and contributed bitcoin transaction. It is also the first widely accepted cryptocurrency. In 2011, various other cryptocurrencies also got emerged in addition to bitcoins.
Methods of earning bitcoins:
Bitcoins can be efficiently earned from the following methods:
Bitcoin mining – A process of verifying and recording blockchain transactions of bitcoins.
Bitcoin trading – A process of exchanging bitcoins for some other products, currencies, and services.
Bitcoin can be bought with credit cards. Both online and offline options are available for buying and selling bitcoins. Bitcoin is not a printed currency and it is entirely different from the other type of currencies including euros or dollars. Its most notable feature is that it is a decentralized currency. The credit card processors usually impose a processing charge of around 2 – 3 % for bitcoin processing. We need to select a wallet for storing the bitcoins and multiply them according to our wish.
Bitcoin Wallet:
A wallet is nothing but a software program or application, which is used to maintain the transaction details of our online purchases. It keeps the essential information required for the transaction of bitcoins. It permits the users to spend and access their bitcoins effectively.
Selection of a Bitcoin Wallet:
Selecting a wallet is very simple. But while selecting a wallet, we have to ensure that whether the invested bitcoin will be kept in a safe and secure manner. Also, we need to ensure that the selected wallet must be compatible with our Android device, iPhone, and hard drives. The best recommended option for bitcoin investment is the coin bank since it offers a higher interest rate when compared to the interest rates offered by traditional banks.
Please have a look at bitcoin wallet in the video below which was created by 99Bitcoins:
Types of Bitcoin wallets:
The two major types of bitcoin wallets include:
Lightweight clients- They send and receive bitcoin transactions by consulting the full clients and are compatible with all kinds of devices, even with the low-bandwidth devices. It also facilitates a simple setup.
Full clients- They directly monitor all the bitcoin transactions and are not compatible with all kinds of devices.
Bitcoin usage:
Bitcoins are mostly used for business purposes. Many businesses offer a more reliable, secure, and instant payment method for bitcoins.
Estimation of Bitcoin usage as of 2015:
Approximately bitcoin payments are accepted by around 100,000 business persons as of 2015.
Bitcoin Popularity
Since the genesis of Bitcoin, the keyword was not that often searched and was covering a negligible interest percentage according to Google trends. The surprising growth overtook the search engines into a trance of 100% trending rate in popularity graph in December 2017 according to Google trends. Many countries even saw it as most searched term in finance category. The term Bitcoin-Kaufen, which means to buy bitcoin, is one the most viewed investment terms in Germany. Buy bitcoin with PayPal is another keyword that trended during the uprising of Bitcoin price.
Bitcoin Denominations:
The code used for bitcoin is XBT^[a] and the symbol used for bitcoin is BTC.
- Satoshi refers to a subunit of 10^-8.
- Microbitcoin refers to a subunit of 10^-6 and its corresponding symbol is μBTC.
- Millibitcoin refers to a subunit of 10^-3 and its corresponding symbol is mBTC.
Hope this basic introduction will be useful for the beginners to understand basics of the bitcoins and crypto-currency wallets. For more info on Bitocoins you may also visit wikipedia’s bitcoin page.
