Assets, Bitcoin

What Does a Bitcoin Look Like?

When it comes to Bitcoin, there is no physical form that the currency exists in. So, what does a Bitcoin look like?

A Bitcoin is a digital asset and a payment system invented by Satoshi Nakamoto. Transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a public dispersed ledger called a blockchain.

Bitcoin is unique in that there are a finite number of them: 21 million.

Bitcoins are created as a reward for a process known as mining. They can be exchanged for other currencies, products, and services.

As of February 2015, over 100,000 merchants and vendors accepted bitcoin as payment.

NOTE: WARNING: It is important to remember that Bitcoin does not have a physical form, and therefore cannot be seen or touched. As such, there is no single thing that “looks” like a Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a digital asset, meaning that it exists only as data within a computer network, and the only thing that can be seen or touched related to Bitcoin are the paper or physical objects used to store the private keys associated with one’s wallet.

The unit of account of the bitcoin system is a bitcoin. Ticker symbols used to represent bitcoin are BTC and XBT. Its Unicode character is ₿. Small amounts of bitcoin used as alternative units are millibitcoin (mBTC), and satoshi (sat).

Named in homage to its creator, a satoshi is the smallest amount within bitcoin representing 0.00000001 bitcoins, one hundred millionth of a bitcoin.

A physical bitcoin is simply an object that embodies digital bitcoins. Since there are no physical bitcoins, they’re usually represented by paper wallets or metal coins.

These can either be purchased or acquired through bitcoin faucets and games or earned through trading on a cryptocurrency exchange.

So, what does a Bitcoin look like? In short, it looks like whatever you want it to look like!.

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