Assets, Bitcoin

What Is the Design of Bitcoin?

Bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency, without a central bank or single administrator, that can be sent from user to user on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network without the need for intermediaries. Transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a public distributed 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.

NOTE: WARNING: Bitcoin is a highly technical and complex system. Therefore, it is important to understand the design of Bitcoin before attempting to use or invest in it. Investing or using Bitcoin without a thorough understanding of its design could lead to financial losses as a result of incorrect investment decisions or incorrect use of the system.

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

The bitcoin network is designed to mathematically generate no more than 21 million bitcoins. The network is programmed so that each block produced by miners contains a hash—a unique fingerprint—of the previous block.

This ensures that no one can tamper with the blockchain or replace parts of it with forged blocks.

Previous ArticleNext Article