Bitcoin Forum

I have just completed a second draft for a FAQ on bitcoin.org.
The result can be previewed live here : ----
Edit : After weeks of review, the FAQ is live: http://bitcoin.org/en/faq. Thanks everyone!

More reviews will be useful. If you wish to, please leave a comment and concrete suggestions of improvement if you find:

- More or less accurate or ambiguous assertions.
- Texts that you think are unrelevant.
- Sentences that are poorly written or typos.
- Missing important informations.

--

The goal for this FAQ is to remain an accessible, objective and concise informative resource with a special interest about recurring myths and concerns.

Once completed and published, it will also be possible to translate this FAQ just like the rest of the website, allowing us to potentially have a good international FAQ.

Thanks in advance

A very thorough update.  Thank you.  Will review properly in the coming days.

Cheers

ANX.HK (http://ANX.HK)

Quite nice. I've got a suggestion for "I'd like to learn more. Where can I get help?" through - when people want to get help, they probably don't want to go through a couple of resources. I suggest linking to #bitcoin's freenode webchat and bitcoin.stackexchange directly.

Thanks!

Perhaps integrating the Freenode webchat there could make sense. Though what I appreciated with the idea of linking the community and resources pages, since these pages are aimed to show different communities and websites based on the language of the user reading the FAQ in the future. Also, it gives users more than just one choice in case they don't like IRC for example and prefer live meetups, or then again, if they don't get a satisfying answer on IRC they can try elsewhere.

The who invented Bitcoin section dives right into defending foss. I would split that into why should people trust an anonymous inventor?

Anyone else want to review and comment?

Many people ask:
How do bitcoins look like?

Could someone please help Saivann by proof-reading the latest draft? It has got some typos and spelling issues in it, and someone needs to go over it carefully to ensure we found them all.

I can take a look but the page is blocked here at work.  Any alt url or cached copy?  Or can someone paste it into an email and send to runam0k at outlook dot com?

I just sent you the FAQ by email, thanks!

I just read through the FAQ. Kudos to blockgenesis. I couldn't have done it any better.

Just gave the FAQ a read-through, content looks pretty good.  Here are my notes (they're in order, but ctrl-f should find the relevant spots - sorry, I would've edited the full document in retrospect):

• "with millions of dollars [worth of bitcoins] exchanged daily"
• "then succesfully [successfully] reverse [reverses] the transaction"
• "Bitcoin payments are easier to make than existing banking or credit card process [debit or credit card purchases, and can be received without any special merchant account]."
• "and directly deposit [depositing] the funds to the merchants [merchant's] account daily"
• "This protects merchants from losses caused by fraud or fraudulent chargebacks[,] and there is no"
• "No individual or organization can control or manipulate [the] Bitcoin protocol."
• "still needs to grow in order to benefit from networking network effects."
• "make Bitcoin more accessible to the masses[,] but some user tools"
• "Most Bitcoin businesses are new[,] and most of them don't offer any insurance."
• "no organization or individual can control Bitcoin[,] and the network remains secure"
• "is no garantee [guarantee] that Bitcoin will continue"
• "each individual to make a proper evalution [evaluation] of the costs"
• "as physical coins like the Casascius coins[,] but paying with a mobile"
• "stored in a large distributed network[,] and they cannot be fraudulently altered"
• "bitcoins cannot vanish [just] because they are virtual"
• "However, it is worth to note [noting] that Bitcoin will undoubtedly be subjected"
• "it is not likely to prevent criminal investigations to be [from being] conducted"
• "there is no chance for anybody to find the private key that would allow to spend them [them to be spent] again"
• "when fewer bitcoins are available[,] the ones that are left will be in higher demand"
• "So, as bitcoins are lost, bitcoins [they] will eventually increase in value to compensate."
• "being done to lift current limitations[,] and future requirements are well known"
• "maturation, optimization and specialization[,] and it should be expected to remain"
• "will use lightweight clients[,] and full network nodes will become"
• "severely restrict or ban all foreign currency[,] like Argentina"
• "Bitcoin is money[,] and money has always been"
• "significant innovation in payment systems[,] and the benefits of those innovations"
• "such as backups, encryption and multi-signature [multiple signatures]"
• "The use of Bitcoin will undoubtedly be subjected to similar regulations that are already in place inside existing financial systems[,] and Bitcoin is not likely to prevent criminal investigations to be [from being] conducted"
• "[The] Internet is a good example among many others to illustrate this observation."
• "The Bitcoin protocol in itself cannot be modified"
• "doomed not to succeed and would rather [only] end up creating a new"
• "It is however possible to regulate the use of Bitcoin in a similar way than [as] any other instrument. Just as [like] the dollar, Bitcoin can be used for a wide range [variety] of reasons [purposes], some of which can be considered legitimate or not as per each jurisdiction [jurisdiction's] laws."
• "process called mining. This process involves that individuals are rewarded by the network for their services. More specifically, miners [Miners] are processing"
• "no more than a fixed amount of Bitcoin can be created approximately each [every] 10 minutes"
• "completely halt with a market cap [total] of 21 millions bitcoins"
• "Technically speaking, Bitcoin have [has] all the attributes"
• "physical properties of a rock [substance] like gold"
• "amount of bitcoins in circulation[,] and this amount is owned and divided between all Bitcoin users"
• "price increases[,] and when there is less demand"
• "demand must equate to [follow] this level of inflation"
• "Because Bitcoin still hold [is still] a relatively small market"
• "Bitcoin prooved its reliability [has proven reliable] for a few years "
• "no one is in a position to predict what will be the future [will be] for Bitcoin"
• "This is very similar to investing in a [an] early startup that is either gaining value through its usefulness and popularity over time, or [one that] just never break [broke] through. Bitcoin is still at [in] its infancy[,] and it has been designed with a very long-term view, [;] it is hard to imagine how it could be less tilted towards early adopters[,] and today's users might or might not"
• "As the average transaction size reduces [decreases], transactions can be denominated in sub-units of a bitcoin[,] such as"
• "Bitcoin is an existence proof that the theory [counterexample to the theory, showing that it] must sometimes be wrong"
• "Despite all this[,] Bitcoin is not designed to be a deflationary currency"
• "allowing them to profit of [from] the advantages of Bitcoin"
• "Bitcoin will succeed to mature and develop to a degree where price volatility will decrease [becomes limited]"
• "What if someone bought up all the existing Bitcoins [bitcoins]?"
• "This situation doesn't [isn't to] suggest, however, that the markets aren't vulnerable to price manipulation. It [; it] doesn't take significant amounts of money to move the market price up or down[,] and thus Bitcoin remains a volatile asset."
• "As for [of] now, Bitcoin remains by far the first and foremost private decentralized virtual currency[,] but there can't be any guarantees"
• "Bitcoin in terms of esthablished [established] market"
• "Most transactions can be processed without fees[,] but users are encouraged to pay a small [voluntary] fee by their own for faster confirmation"
• "If you are receiving [a] large number of tiny amounts, then fees when sending will be higher[.] because this [This] payment could be compared to paying a restaurant bill using only penny coins [pennies]."
• "shared between all software [the computers] on the network"
• "when your wallet client program is not running, and you later launch the wallet client"
• "catch up with any transactions it did not already know about[,] and the coins will eventually appear "
• "What does "synchronizing" means [mean] and why is it taking so long?"
• "This step can be resource consuming and requires to have enough bandwidth and storage for the full block chain size [to accommodate the full size of the blockchain]."
• "Mining is the process of spending computation [computing] power to process transactions, secure the network[,] and keeps [keep] everyone in the system synchronized together."
• "Mining is called this way [This process is referred to as mining as an analogy to gold mining] because it is also a temporary [the] mechanism used to issue [new] bitcoins in a very similar way to a scarse commodity like gold. However as opposed to gold, [Unlike gold mining, however,] Bitcoin mining provides a reward in exchange of a [for] useful work required to operate a secure payment network."
• "broadcast through the peer-to-peer network and perform [performs] appropriate tasks to process and confirm"
• "transaction fees paid by customers for faster transaction processing[,] and newly created coins, issued into existence according to a fixed formula"
• "proofs are very hard to generate because there is no way to create them other than [by] trying millions of random calculations"
• "ensure that the average time to find a block remains equal to 10 minutes on average"
• "very competitive business where no [individual] miner can control what is included in the block chain"
• "Proof of works [Proofs of work] are also designed to depend on the previous block"
• "because this would require to recalculate [recalculating] the proof of works [proofs of work] of all following [the subsequent] blocks"
• "corrupt the Bitcoin network because all Bitcoin node [nodes] would reject any block that contains"

I only made it to the "Is Bitcoin mining a waste of energy?" section.  I have to go to bed now, but I'll try to finish the rest off tomorrow if nobody else does.

Thanks for writing this blockgenesis!

Thank you so much for this help, I started applying your changes and they should be in the pull request later today.

its very helpful good work

d'aniel, you rock as always.

The 'existence proof' thing actually came from me (I wrote the answer to that question). It's a term I've seen used a few times, but you're right that it's probably a bit weird/unusual for the FAQ.

Thanks for your appreciation and for your help. I received another set of fixes from runam0k by email. I'll report there once I've completed this work. Nearly all d'aniel fixes are now already merged and pushed. The live preview should always be up to date with the latest changes. If you want to give help, I'd say, start with the end (since most reviewers often don't get to this part).

It is worth noting that many people deserve credits for this work, including Mike Hearn, Trace Mayer and the people who wrote the existing Wiki FAQ. Not to mention various quotes from respected people in this community ( Gavin Andresen, Patrick Murck, Roger Ver, Tony Gallippi and so on.. ) on which many texts are based or important projects like Andreas mobile wallet app, usebitcoins.info or blockchain.info that are adding pictures and reality to words. While I wrote many parts of this FAQ, the real value of this work resides in the rich ecosystem around Bitcoin and I hope that once published, this FAQ will serve as a good explanation for the most amazing invention of our times.

Here are my edits to the rest of the FAQ:

Isn't Bitcoin mining a waste of energy?

Spending energy on securing and operating [to secure and operate] a payment system is hardly a waste. Like any other [payment] service, the use of Bitcoin is implying [entails] processing costs that are covered by the usefulness of the services offered. Services necessary for the operation of currently widespread monetary systems, such as banks and credit card companies[, credit cards, and armored vehicles], also spend [use] a lot of energy. So does any goods or services people are using or buying every day. However as opposed to [Although unlike] Bitcoin, this global [their total] energy consumption is not transparent and cannot be [easily] measured publicly.

Bitcoin mining has been designed to become more optimized over time with specialized hardware using [consuming] less energy[,] consumption and the operating costs of mining should continue to be proportional to the demand. When Bitcoin mining becomes unprofitable, some miners choose [miners tend to] to stop their activities.  [Furthermore, all energy expended mining is eventually transformed into heat, and the most profitable miners will be those who have put this heat to good use. An optimally efficient mining network is one that isn't actually consuming any extra energy than would otherwise be consumed if no Bitcoin mining were taking place. While this is an ideal, the economics of mining are such that miners individually strive toward it.]

How does mining help secure Bitcoin?

Mining creates the equivalence [equivalent] of a competitive lottery that makes it very difficult for anyone to consecutively add new blocks of transactions in [into] the block chain. This allows to protect [protects] the neutrality of the network by preventing any individual to gain [from gaining] the power to block certain transactions. This also prevents any individual to replace [from replacing] parts of the block chain to roll back their own spends, which could be used to defraud other users. Additionally, mining [Mining] makes it exponentially difficult to reverse previous transactions because it would require to rewrite [a past transaction by requiring the rewriting of] all blocks following this transaction.

What do I need to start mining?

In the early days, anyone could find new blocks using standard computers['] CPUs. As more and more people started mining, the difficulty of finding new blocks has greatly increased to the point where the only cost-effective method of mining is using specialized hardware (ASICs). You can visit BitcoinMining.com for more information.

Security

Is Bitcoin secure?

The Bitcoin technology - the protocol and the cryptography - has a strong security track record[,] and the Bitcoin network is probably the biggest distributed computing project in the world. Bitcoin's vulnerability is in user error. Bitcoin wallet files that store the necessary private keys can be accidentally deleted, lost or stolen. This is pretty similar to physical cash in a computer or mobile. Fortunately, users can employ security practices to protect their money or use service providers that offer good levels of security and insurance [against theft or loss]. Bitcoins are not covered by insurance schemes or depositor insurance like the FDIC, but users' wallets could be with a service provider that offers that provision. Note: I just deleted this sentence because it just repeated what was said in the previous sentence, and it introduced confusion with the mention of deposit insurance, a solution to a much different problem than risk of theft or loss.

Hasn't Bitcoin been hacked in the past?

The Bitcoin protocol in itself has never suffered from a security breach and is still working great after [more than four] years, which is a fairly good indication that the concept is well designed. However, security flaws have been found and fixed over time in various software implementations. Like any other form of software, the security of Bitcoin software depends on the speed with which problems are found and fixed. The more such issues are discovered, the more Bitcoin is gaining maturity.

There is [are] often misconceptions about thefts and security breaches that happened on diverse exchanges and businesses. Although these events are unfortunate, in [during] none of them [has] Bitcoin has been hacked, [-] just like a bank being robbed doesn't mean that the dollar is compromised. However it is true that a complete set of good practices and intuitive security solutions need [needs] to be developped [developed] around Bitcoin to help [give] users having a better control and protection of their money[,] and continue to reduce the general risk of theft and loss. Over the course of the last [few] years, such security features [have quickly] developed at a fast rate like [, such as] wallet encryption, offline wallets, multi-signature [transactions] and hardware wallets.

Could users collude against Bitcoin?

It isn't possible to change the Bitcoin protocol with a majority of users or miners. Any miner that doesn't comply with the protocol immediately generates a chain fork[,] as the rest of the network [- non-mining nodes included -] is rejecting [rejects] blocks from these miners [this miner] , including all Bitcoin nodes that are not mining. As per the current specification, no double spending is possible on the same block chain[,] nor [and neither is] spending bitcoins without a valid signature. Consequently, it is not possible to generate uncontrolled amounts of bitcoins out of thin air, spend other users['] funds, corrupt the network or anything similar.

However, a majority of miners could arbirarily choose to block or reverse targeted recent transactions. This could be used for censorship purposes or to defraud targeted [particular] merchants. But this can also be used for legitimate purposes, like applying a collaborative emergency action to help fixing [fix] a problem with the network like the march 2013 chain fork[.]

Is Bitcoin vulnerable to quantum computing?

Yes, and so are all systems relying on cryptography in general[,] including current banking systems. However, quantum computers don't yet exist and probably won't for a while. In the event that quantum computing could be an imminent threat to Bitcoin, the protocol could be upgraded to use new algorithms. Given the importance that this update would have, it can be safely expected that it would be highly reviewed by developers and adopted by all Bitcoin users.

Can't Bitcoin be cracked or shutdown?

Bitcoin is likely to survive almost anything. The real question is to know where it will [where will it] prosper. Bitcoin has been designed to be a very resilient technology in order to be reliable as a global financial tool. The way it works is very similar to other decentralized networks such as the Internet. No individual or developer have [has] control over Bitcoin[,] and as long as some users and miners remain, the network will continue existing. This high level of resiliency and redundancy is unmatched in the payments space and represents an important breakthrough for the protection of financial systems.

Even though technical failures are possible, Bitcoin has demonstrated its ability to withstand various forms of attacks for years[,] and the discovery of new technical issues would likely only lead to further improvements. Bitcoin use could however be made difficult by restrictive regulations, in which case it would be hard to determine what percentage of users would keep using the technology. A government that chooses to make Bitcoin illegal would prevent many domestic businesses and markets from developing, shifting innovation to other countries.

Thanks a lot d'aniel, that's really appreciated. I will review and merge your last proposed changes tomorrow.

Perhaps it was just sounding weird to me, but I've always heard a proof that a conjecture is false referred to as a counterexample.  When I read "existence proof", it made me think "existence theorem".

Great! I'm hoping we can launch this soon.

Saivann, it might be cool to have HTML anchors for each question so it's possible to link inside the document, as it's quite large now.

Here's what I have so far:

Who created Bitcoin?

Bitcoin is one of the first implementations the first fully functional implementation of a concept called "crypto-currency", which was first described in 1998 in a proposal by Wei Dai on the cypherpunks mailing list, suggesting the idea of a new form of money that uses cryptography to control its creation and transactions, rather than relying a central authority. The first Bitcoin specification and proof of concept was published in 2009 in a cryptography mailing list by Satoshi Nakamoto. Satoshi left the project in late 2010 without revealing much about himself. The community has since grown exponentially with many developers working on Bitcoin.

The anonymity of Satoshi often raiseds unjustified concerns due to a misunderstanding of the open-source nature of Bitcoin. The protocol and software have been published in such a way that any developer around the world can review the code and make different their own modified version of the Bitcoin software. Just like current developers, Satoshi had limited influence 's influence was limited to the changes he made being adopted by others and therefore he did not control Bitcoin. Trying to find who invented  todayn today The identity of Bitcoin's inventor is probably as relevant today as trying to find who invented the identity of the person who invented paper.

Who controls the Bitcoin network?

Just like nobody owns the technology behind email, nobody owns the Bitcoin network. Bitcoin is controlled by all Bitcoin users around the world. While developers are improving the software, they can't force a change in the Bitcoin protocol because all users are free to choose what software and version they use. In order to stay compatible with each other, all users need to use software complying with the same rules. Bitcoin can only work correctly with a complete consensus between all users. Therefore, all users and developers have a strong incentive to adopt and protect this consensus. This also means that if something is wrong, all users and developers have a strong incentive to help fixing the problem.

How does Bitcoin work?

From a user perspective, Bitcoin is simply a mobile app or computer program that provides personal Bitcoin addresses and allows one to send and receive bitcoins with them. That pretty much sums up how Bitcoin works for most users.

Behind the scenes, the Bitcoin network is sharing a public ledger called the "block chain". This ledger contains every transaction ever processed, allowing a user's computer to verify the validity of each transaction. Users can create an unlimited number of Bitcoin addresses. These addresses are used to define where bitcoins are sent to and where they come from. The authenticity of each transaction is protected by digital signatures corresponding to the sending address, allowing all users to have full control over sending bitcoins from their own Bitcoin addresses. In addition, anyone can process transactions using the computing power of specialized hardware and earn a reward in bitcoins for this service. This is often called "mining". To learn more about Bitcoin, you can consult the dedicated page and the original paper.

Is Bitcoin really used by people?

Yes. There is a growing number of businesses and individuals using Bitcoin, including brick and mortar businesses like restaurants and popular online services such as Namecheap, Reddit, WordPress and Flattr. While Bitcoin remains a relatively new phenomenon, it is growing fast. At the end of August 2013, the value of all bitcoins in circulation was in excess of US$ 1.5 billion with millions of dollars exchanged daily through up to 70,000 transactions.

**

How difficult is it to make a Bitcoin payment?

Bitcoin payments are easier to make than debit or credit card purchases, and can be received without any merchant account. Payments are made from a wallet application, either on your computer or smartphone, by entering the recipient's address, the payment amount, and pressing send. To make it easier to enter a recipient's address, many wallets can obtain the recipient's address by scanning a QR code or touching two phones together with NFC technology, and the address can also be saved in your address book also have an address book where the address can be saved for later use. Of course, a simple copy/paste works too.

Mike Hearn: Absolutely, there is already a table of content at the beginning of the page with anchor links to each question. The anchor links can be translated like the rest of the FAQ. I wanted each question to be linkable and referenced on Google individually. Just let me know if you see that I'm missing something.

amincd: Thanks!

Ok, I have reviewed all proposed changes from runam0k, d'aniel, Mike Hearn, amincd and other people at the Foundation. Most of them are merged. I will look back at these changes later today or tomorrow to check if some of them would be worth some more discussion.

Meanwhile I've updated the branch and the live preview, feel free to provide additional suggested improvements, it's always useful.

Well thank you very much everyone for your help. After weeks of continuous reviews and improvements, the FAQ is now live!
http://bitcoin.org/en/faq