Bitcoin is a digital currency that was developed in January 2009. It offers the promise of lower transaction fees other than traditional online payment mechanisms.
Unlike government-issued currencies, cryptocurrency trading is being operated by a decentralized authority.
Bitcoin is among the top best cryptocurrencies in the world that you can easily trade with.
There are no physical bitcoins. It is only the balances that are being placed on a public ledger that everyone has access to. Take note that any transaction at all on bitcoin is being verified by a huge amount of computing power.
The cryptocurrency is not issued or backed up by any government or bank. Not even individual bitcoins valuable as a commodity.
Even with the fact that the cryptocurrency is not a leger tender, it is still very popular and has also brought about the existence of the rest of cryptocurrencies, which are referred to as “altcoins”. The cryptocurrency is abbreviated as “BTC”.
Bitcoin Mining
This is a process whereby the cryptocurrency is being released into circulation. In General form, mining involves the solving of mathematically hard puzzles so as to discover a new block, which is included in the blockchain.
Bitcoin mining includes and verifies transaction records over the network. Miners are being compensated with some bitcoins for including blocks to the blockchain. And the reward is bisected every 210,000 blocks.
In 2019, the block reward was 50 new bitcoins. While on the 11th of May, 2020, the 3rd halving took place, which brought down the reward for each block discovery to 6.25 bitcoins.
A bitcoin is divisible to 8 decimal places which are 100 millionths of one bitcoin. And the smallest unit is called a “Satoshi”.
How Does it Works?
Each bitcoin is a computer file that is being kept in a digital wallet app on either your computer or your smartphone. People can as well send Bitcoins to your digital wallet and you can send them to them too.
Every single transaction on bitcoin is being taken note of in a public list known as “Blockchain”.
And this makes it very easy to track the history of Bitcoins to prevent people from having to spend coins that are not theirs. And also duplicating them or undo-ing transactions being made.
How Do You Get Bitcoins?
There are 3 major ways to get it and they include:
- Selling things and allowing people to pay you with Bitcoins.
- Buying Bitcoins using real money.
- Or you can create it by making use of a computer.
How do you Create New bitcoins?
For the system to work, people can actually make their computer process transactions for everyone.
The computers are also made to works out very difficult sums. Sometimes they are being compensated with a Bitcoin for the owner to store.
People also create strong computers just to get Bitcoins and this referred to as “Mining”. I explained mining earlier, so I believe you understand what it is all about.
However, the sums are becoming difficult day by day to prevent too many Bitcoins from being produced.
How to Buy Bitcoin
Buying the cryptocurrency is quite easy and here, I will be showing you how you can easily buy bitcoin from the buy bitcoin website and from Bitcoin.com Wallet. Keep reading to see.
From their website
- Visit their official Buy Bitcoin page “www.buy.bitcoin.com”.
- Next is to pick the currency you want to buy.
- Now select if you want to purchase in USD or any local currency.
- Enter your amount.
- Now review carefully then include your wallet address then tap “Continue”.
- Finally, finish up the purchase process by setting up an account and disclosing your payment details.
From Bitcoin.com Wallet
- Open the Bitcoin.com wallet app on your phone.
- Then click on the green “Buy” button if you want to purchase BCH, Bitcoin Cash. Or click on the orange “Buy” button if you want to buy BHC, Bitcoin.
- Next is to follow the on-screen instructions to pay coins to the wallet you want to deposit into.
- You will be asked to verify your identity.
- Once you finish the step, your purchase will then begin.
Is it Safe?
All transactions being made on Bitcoin are publicly taken note of so it is not so easy to duplicate Bitcoins, create a fake copy or spend bitcoins that are not yours.
It is also very possible for you to misplace your wallet or remove your Bitcoins permanently and lose them permanently. There have been series o thefts from websites that enable you to keep your Bitcoins remotely.