What is bitcoin, what is blockchain?
Anna Flores
#DigitalMarketing Manager at Bentech Ai LLC #AI #DeepLearning #Machinelearning #Benefitstechnology #Benefits
In 2017, the value of the digital asset is $20,000, then settled back down below $15,000, and is up nearly 1,500% this year. Coinbase surpassed 13 million users and briefly became the number 1 smartphone app on the iOS App Store. In the case of mainstream financial exchanges such as CME, Cboe, and Nasdaq, they are all rushing into bitcoin futures trading.
What exactly is bitcoin?
Cryptocurrencies are still a young technology, and cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin are very popular. But people don’t fully understand what it is, what it’s used for, whether they should buy it, and how to buy it.
What is bitcoin?
Bitcoin is a digital currency that runs on a public ledger. You can buy, sell, and trade Bitcoins. Bitcoins can be used as payment for hard goods, like a currency.
Bitcoin is open-source code for a decentralized, P2P payment system. Additionally, Bitcoin is a digital currency (or cryptocurrency), but only a few people are using Bitcoin to buy things. Actually, people are rushing into Bitcoin to buy and hold it as a speculative investment. Indeed, for this reason, Bitcoin right now is “digital asset” or “digital token.” Actually, you can use an exchange such as Coinbase, Kraken, Bitfinex, or Bitstamp to buy Bitcoins.
Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin in 2009, but it still isn’t known who that was.
What is blockchain?
Bitcoin runs on the blockchain, which is an immutable digital ledger. This means that the records can’t be changed or eliminated. Furthermore, every single transaction done in bitcoin is recorded on the public ledger.
The transaction data is recorded on the blocks by “miners”. The miners use expensive machines to mine the blocks. So, the miner’s machines solve complicated computations in real time. The first miner that solves a complicated computation is rewarded with bitcoin. This is how a bitcoin is created. The maximum number of Bitcoins that can be created is 21 million coins, and 16.7 million coins have been mined so far.
Blockchain technology originated with bitcoin, but there are new blockchain platforms for other cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum blockchain and its cryptocurrency (Ether).
Many big banks and other financial institutions aim to use blockchain technology, but without Bitcoin.
In 2017, bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies such as ether, litecoin, and bitcoin cash started flying as investment poured in, and Bitcoin is more popular than blockchain.
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Anna, great article... it's important as a community that we distinguish between Bitcoin as a brand, and Blockchains as a technology. I hear many people who don't understand that there are even multiple Blockchains!