You want to tell people about Bitcoin, but you’re not sure how to start?
Just let them read this:
Bitcoin in 10 sentences
- You cannot take Bitcoins in your hands.
- You can find them in a digital book with over 500,000 pages.
- This digital book has been freely available to the public for over 10 years.
- On the pages, you will find all the transfers and account balances of all Bitcoin owners.
- Every 10 minutes a new page with new transfers will be added.
- This page cannot be changed later or removed from the book.
- It is mathematically impossible to falsify the book therefore; you can always trust the content.
- With the help of a secret (private) key, you can open an account without permission within a few seconds, always and everywhere.
- Nobody else can access your account and you do not need a bank because your transfer is simply written to the next page of the book.
- Nobody controls this book, no state, no company and nobody knows who posted it on the internet…
Who manages the book?
Answer: Everyone
The same book is spread throughout the world on tens of thousands of computers, which together form an independent network.
Each computer independently checks every letter in its book without being influenced by the other computers.
They check for example, if transfers are made only by the right owner and Bitcoins are not spent multiple times.
Every computer runs a program that contains all applicable rules.
A new page may only be included in the book if all computers have successfully checked and accepted it.
This means that all computers in the entire network are always on the same page.
How do bitcoins come into being?
Answer: They are printed.
On 3 January 2009 at 18:15:04, neither a book nor a single Bitcoin existed.
One-second later, page one was created together with the first Bitcoins. Each new page in the book creates new bitcoins.
The note press will print a maximum of 21 million bitcoins and will turn off itself in 2140.
If you want to buy Bitcoins today, you can use one of many exchanges on the internet.
How do new pages get into the book?
Answer: Special Headline
All pages in the book must have a matching special headline. Today only professional authors (miners) are able to create them. Authors compete against each other with special computers.
Each new page takes five steps:
1. Authors need to solve a task as quickly as possible, which will provide a special headline as a result.
2. As soon as an author finds the solution, he sends his page including headline to all computers on the network.
3. Within a few seconds, the computers can check the result.
4. If everything is right, all computers write the new page including headline in the book.
5. As a reward for his page the author gets freshly printed Bitcoins.
The computers of all authors start immediately with the calculation of the next page and it starts again at step 1.
The program adjusts the difficulty of the task every 2 weeks, so the authors always need an average of 10 minutes to calculate the matching headline.
Why is the procedure tamper-proof?
Answer: Special Headline
All special headlines in the book are linked to each letter and punctuation mark up to the very first page.
Example: We are currently on page 500,000 of the book.
If you change an account balance on page 499,000, you trigger a chain reaction, which changes all 1,000 headlines until the most current page.
Not a single computer on the network will accept your version of the book.
P.S.
Next to transactions, one can also write messages into the book. I paid a fee to one of the authors to write the following message:
“Ya264B5C3BAB5AD9406A346DC43F519CA28F5CB4C90324EB962970AFA61110CFBFYa”
My message is now on page 546,267. Nobody is able to change it or remove it from all the computers in the network.
You find it here:
Block: 546267
Special Headline: 000000000000000000249b3ec5d6822a1a43d1870b1ce94b28e48ab081000118
Date: 2018-10-18
BTC Account: 1JPmuvN9dabWYCF2eoh7kHDXZAEWSH9Kda
BTC Transaction ID: 4c59c721e5561cebd6383d7a6f2850c688204ec4c7412655dbf3ed77167635bb
Author: Yaya Camara