Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency and a payment system, first proposed by an anonymous person or group of people under the name Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. Bitcoin uses peer-to-peer technology to operate with no central authority or banks; managing transactions and the issuing of bitcoins is carried out collectively by the network. Bitcoin is open-source; its design is public, nobody owns or controls Bitcoin and everyone can take part.
Bitcoin is unique in that there are a finite number of them: 21 million. Satoshi Nakamoto devised a way to generate these bitcoins, through a process called mining. Miners are rewarded with bitcoins for verifying and committing transactions to the blockchain. As of February 2017, over 16 million bitcoins had been mined.
What is Ethereum?
Ethereum is a decentralized platform that runs smart contracts: applications that run exactly as programmed without any possibility of fraud or third party interference. Ethereum is open-source; its design is public, nobody owns or controls Ethereum and everyone can take part.
Ethereum was born out of a frustration with the shortcomings of Bitcoin. Vitalik Buterin, a programmer involved with Bitcoin, observed that Bitcoin had significant limitations due to its block size limit and that it was difficult to develop applications on top of Bitcoin. Ethereum was designed to address these limitations.
What is a Cryptocurrency?
A cryptocurrency is a digital or virtual currency that uses cryptography to secure its transactions and to control the creation of new units. Cryptocurrencies are decentralized, meaning they are not subject to government or financial institution control. Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies are examples of digital currencies.
What is a Cryptocurrency Exchange?
A cryptocurrency exchange is a platform where users can buy, sell, or trade cryptocurrencies for other digital currencies or traditional currency. Cryptocurrency exchanges are similar to traditional currency exchanges, except they deal in cryptocurrencies instead of traditional currency.
What is Defi?
Defi stands for decentralized finance and is a term used to describe a host of financial applications that operate on a blockchain. These applications include decentralized exchanges, decentralized loans, and decentralized derivatives markets. Defi is an important development in the blockchain space as it allows for the development of financial applications that do not rely on a third party.
What is a Blockchain?
A blockchain is a digital ledger of all cryptocurrency transactions. It is constantly growing as "completed" blocks are added to it with a new set of recordings. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a timestamp, and transaction data. Bitcoin nodes use the block chain to differentiate legitimate Bitcoin transactions from attempts to re-spend coins that have already been spent elsewhere.
What is Mining?
Mining is how new bitcoins are created. Miners are rewarded with bitcoins for verifying and committing transactions to the blockchain. As of February 2017, over 16 million bitcoins had been mined.
0 Comments