What is Bitcoin and Blockchain?

Unless you have been tuned out or living under a rock for most of the year, you have probably hear people talking about crypto-currencies and more specifically Bitcoin. You have probably also wondered, "What is Bitcoin?". This is a questions I myself had and continue to research and study as the market become more acceptable of this new currency. In this post we will do a shallow dive into bitcoin and the technology that is behind it called blockchain.

What Is Bitcoin?

Bitcoin in the simplest description is a currency that is digital and is "spent/transferred" using a technology called blockchain which makes it almost impossible for fraudulent transactions or theft to happen. You may be wondering what blockchain is, we will go over it in the next section. The value behind is based on the technology as well as scarcity. Bitcoin has a limit to how many bitcoins will be "mined", so the value is determined a lot based on the scarcity of how many coins are available, much like a collectible.

What is Blockchain?

Blockchain put simply is a new technology that allows for transfers to occur and be validated without the users to know one another. Think back to trading baseball cards. The only way a card could be traded was if you knew a person who had a card you wanted and you were able to see the card to know it is real. This still happens everyday. We use bank accounts and the bank verifies funds from the account who is sending money to the account who is accepting the money. Blockchain aims at removing the middle man and make transfers secure. How can it do this? It does it by technology. Blockchain is a network of users, each user has all past transaction on a ledger and when a future transaction needs to take place, the network works together to verify that the prior transactions are correct and the new transaction can take place and once a transaction has taken place it is closed permanently and cannot be removed from the ledgers of all users.

Why should I care?

Bitcoin may not be the future currency that is used, but it is the beginning. This is the worlds first look and experience with digital currency. As the blockchain technology continues to grow and gains more popularity industries and the way we live will forever shift. The future is here and everything will be different.