Bitcoin Forum

These are the best thing I got so far Wall of Fame:

Qwk: "a peer to peer network serialization of linearly dependent data sets".
(I have to reword this one better for new people)

Crypto Girl:  "blockchain - consist of blocks in a chain. Just imagine we have a lot of square ( blocks ) and the information is stored in a block and will broadcast throughout the network."
(maybe blockchain consist of data that is linked, imagine we have 10 people reading a blank book in a room as the author fills in the words simultaneously and in each book the words appear at the same time, everyone is the author and all must agree to one story or at least 51% have to agree to each next word)

or my own that I was told was wrong by the guy that suggested the one up top, and I have to agree with him but I need a way to make that sound normal to normal people I might as well tell them
it is the time continuum transfuctioner or something lol.


I: It is a digital form of Double Entry Bookkeeping, deposits and withdraws with remaining balance on paper.
Luca Pacioli created it in 1494 and Satoshi Nakamoto digitized it on Jan 3rd 2009, now everyone owns a copy of the book that gets updated anytime someone does a transaction.
It is a system in which a record of transactions made in bitcoin or another cryptocurrency are maintained across several computers that are linked in a peer-to-peer network.

I know there is more to it than that, I mean this is for complete noobs and I got 10 seconds to explain.

Most people don`t know what a public ledger is, they know what withdraw and deposits is and remaining balance, they are used to these terms when going to their local banks, but if they do understand a public ledger I guess it works.

That can be the shortest but not decent enough.
The best way is always by giving them a simple and attractive video explanation like this  video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiRFuHXHBhk
Video is always worked in every field, every market.

Actually we dont want them to just know what is the name of this thing, they will just forget it.

Blockchain is a global, decentralized, immutable ledger. It is permissionless.

Corrupt government, banking cartel, corporate deceptions cannot alter it.

Bitcoin = Blockchain

Owning your own Bitcoin is being your own bank.

Bitcoin is the Internet of money.

Blockchain is entirely a new concept and people find it difficult to understand and also it is quite hard to explain as it doesn't have anything physical. The briefing needs to be done explaining a virtual number and how it got into existence. To avoid this complications there were lot of youtube contents available which make the blockchain concept understand with ease. HOW BLOCKCHAIN WORKS (https://youtu.be/SSo_EIwHSd4)

According to a study by Microsoft, the average human being now has an attention span of eight seconds. This is a sharp decrease from the average attention span of 12 seconds in the year 2000
https://www.cision.com/us/2018/01/declining-attention-killing-content-marketing-strategy/
I don`t know if that is legit or not what they said, I don`t have Microsoft`s link.

that video is 5minutes long, I want something I can say to someone when we stop at a red light at the same time.

i am not a fan of short explanations because they only create more and more questions the shorter they get. a good definition is the one mentioned above with terms such as immutable and decentralized in it but that only creates more questions as what it means to be immutable and how.

also a big distinction that i feel like OP messed up in first line is that blockchain does not contain balances. it only contains transactions that occurred and you have to calculate your balance based on that history.

so it contains balances is what your are saying :P I edited a bit, does that work for you? I do understand what you are saying.
I mean I am not a fan of short form either, But I don`t want to have a hour discussion with 1 person I want to have a 360 discussions in 1 hour. 

well it is not a "balance" per se. for example when you have a bank account, a PayPal account, Visa,... there is a database which is like this:
so to know how much money someone has you just have to look up the username.

with bitcoin (the blockchain technology) that "database" looks like this:
and if we say "username" is 1BitcoinAddressThatIUsedTOReceive then i have to loop through all blocks from height 1 to last one and check every single transaction to see which one has paid to my address and which one spent those payments to come up with the final "balance".

uuhmm well, it is a bunch of blocks connected by a chain. :P


What I believe and also practice is that the answer or rather the explanation of bitcoin and blockchain changes depending on who is asking. A 'noob' is not an absolute term. People might even understand complex economics yet won't get the digital part like bitcoin, blockchain, etc.

What you wrote is fine, but I think there is no single explanation you can make for everyone. And I am not talking about book definitions but rather to make people understand what is happening and what are its effects in the society for now and in the future.

so it contains balances is what your are saying  ;D everytime you do some basic maths at the end of a transaction. which "bitcoin" does for you.

That is just plain wrong.
Bitcoin is not a "digitized form of double bookkeeping*".

Double bookkeeping is by its very definition a centralized process (someone keeps the book, the double doesn't refer to that someone being e.g. two people).
Also, in Bitcoin, there is actually no "double" bookkeeping taking place.
"Double" bookkeeping refers mainly to the tallying up of accounts, which is something that does not happen in Bitcoin.

* weird, never noticed before that there's an English word with "ookkee" in it ;)

okay I mean, ookkee  ;) Hey you seem to know your stuff what would you say? keep in mind I am talking about blockchain not bitcoin. I mean do we need the blockchain anyways? What are your thoughts? I think we do need it and it is the most important part about bitcoin

Definitions are by definition arbitrary and usually only applicable to certain aspects of a "thing".
Bearing that in mind, my favorite definition of a blockchain has always been something along the lines of:
"a peer to peer network serialization of linearly dependent data sets".
Boring, isn't it?

In almost all cases: no.
There's one known applicable use case for a blockchain so far, and that's payment systems.

I guess saying "a peer to peer network serialization of linearly dependent data sets". I mean I understand this but it Won`t really work with caveman brains lol.
How can I reword this to the common kid playing fortnite terms? hmmmmmmmmm....................

Indeed. It is better to describe the blockchain definition to someone with a video.
We live in a society that we don't have much time reading and seeing videos and pictures are the best way to spread knowledge.
It helped me a lot when I was trying to learn things about the blockchain, to see videos especially those of Antonopoulos'.

yes those helped me to, but let`s say I can`t show them a video or pictures, Like I got 10 seconds to tell someone what a blockchain is, what do I say?

Indeed. It is better to describe the blockchain definition to someone with a video.
We live in a society that we don't have much time reading and seeing videos and pictures are the best way to spread knowledge.
It helped me a lot when I was trying to learn things about the blockchain, to see videos especially those of Antonopoulos'.

A simple definition is that blockchain is the technology behind bitcoin. Then noone forgets what it is.

I mean I can see it being used in voting, patents, security cameras, obituaries, digital passports and a few other things.

There are simple videos on Youtube that explain it. But another easy way is to have them open a Coinbase account and send bitcoin to their own wallet, and monitor the transaction on the blockchain.

• blockchain - consist of blocks in a chain.

Just imagine we have a lot of square ( blocks ) and the information is stored in a block and will broadcast throughout the network.
Otherwise, it all make sense for someone if he will dig more research as knowing just a word is useless specifically crypto is broad topic.

Explaining to someone who has not yet heard about the blockchain and all the things connected to Bitcoin and cryptocurrency for that matter on the shortest time is not really possible. But you can introduce the concept to him so that he will be the one to research for himself. So what we can do is whet his appetite for more information. And the best site for him to know more is this forum. So I would say that the blockchain is the platform where the financial power is being returned to the people...interested to know more just visit bitcointalk.org.

I prefer to give the videos from Youtube then to explain by myself because to explain about blockchain is not easy, and we need to know more details about that.
It's better if we can explain the function of bitcoin or cryptocurrency so they can know the basics and the feature of bitcoin. Besides that, we can give them a reference so they can learn more by themselves and maybe we can discuss more if they have some question after they learn.
I am sure that will help them to understand the lesson because they are catching the main idea of the video and they can get the right information from the videos.

Blockchain is a distributed ledger, for the sake of safety, uses something called a public key, with only the latter being used to unlock information. Moreover, no person can break into one computer and alter the records for fraudulent purposes.

Benefits of Blockchain:

1. Prevents corruption: it uses sophisticated mathematical encryption, using public and private keys, making sure nobody can corrupt the data.. .
2. Increases Speed and Saves Time: With blockchain, a distributed ledger makes sure all the information is put together in the same place. This naturally saves time and makes the process faster.
3. Cost Cutting: As efficiency is increased and so is speed, the cost is bound to go down.
4. Reduces Chances of Making Mistakes: Blockchain is decentralized, it is not controlled by one central authority.

There is a lot to know more about the Blockchain technology, and if you are curious to study the technology, I would suggest you go through this blog, as I have gain awareness from here itself.
https://www.altcoinsidekick.com/bitcoin-basic-blog/what-is-blockchain-technology

A growing chain of immutable transactions, linked & secured with cryptography, that is open & distributed to every member of the network.

the best way for noob get the idea what is bitcoin is first to explian them from where became peer to peer file sharing and what the reason for peer to peer file sharing.. it the only way no around this , ANTONOPOULOS  the great also explain this in this way...

we have

1. centralized tech -- which mean everything move thourge central servers/entity...for example in money its banks and payapal and other they are middle man between A and B   -----> A -- centralized(middle man/banks/paypal/governemnts) -- B, file sharing like torrnet and other was centralized mean all the info like movies and mp3, software, music and other but governmnets pretty fast locate this middle man central servers and shut them down, then people became more smart and created


2. decentralized tech which mean everything is spread between the users/servers....its called peer to peer which mean there are no main few servers/entity hold all the info mp3,movies,music,software...now its spread between computers around the world, this is why it called peer to peer, and now the governments need to shut down around 500 million private computers around the world and its impossible,

peer to peer put out the middle man/few servers/entity between A and B , now A and B commuincate directly without main severs...

computer A download software from few main servers and computer B and computer C and others = centralized tech
computer A download software from computer B while computer B download movie from computer D and so on = decentralized tech

the nature of peer to peer tech is some peer hold more some less.

3. distributed tech -- its like peer to peer but each peer hold equal info/whatever to other peer in some sort of level,,,compare to decentralized tech where one peer can hold much more then other peer.


AFTER ALL THIS HUMEN MIND CAN UNDERSTAND WHAT IS PEER TO PEER MONEY BECAUSE HE KNOW FROM WHERE IT CAME...

the idea of bitcoin came from peer to peer file sharing and most off the time activists behind peer to peer tech...

now after the mind get what kind of techs other there and know from where bitcoin come and it cannot be other things its called peer to peer cash and came from peer to peer file sharing , the question is left is how A= peer/wallet transfer money to B=peer/wallet while B wallet/peer send to D wallet/peer...

because after he learned that in peer to peer there is no central entity/servers that everything go, how it happen compare to file sharing..

its called blockchain,,,more clear block -- chain
and its no simple way to explian this its must to be learned the other who say its possible to explian this fast dont really understand blockchain its like to explian how car work..

ANTONOPOULOS  have great videos on this , but the smartest in the game was there when the papers was out and was know its not scam and its peer to peer file sharing with twist called blockchain,,,,which all this techs was out there just some people mixed them and nothing new about them for sure.

you right to explian blockchain its impossible in one example...

it very much depends on the newbie! you can't give the same answer to everyone.
for instance to most newbies that i meet in real life i usually focus on telling them not to fall for the "buzzword" that is blockchain and has been used to hide the fact that they were scamming them. so i guess my "short way to explain" blockchain would be to not fall for the hype, and just because someone is talking about it that doesn't mean what they are selling you is any good.

yehh you right

better to stick to experts ....

but all noobs need to know peer to peer cash came from peer to peer file sharing and why peer to peer file sharing was create what the reason for peer to peer file sharing after all this they will understand why peer to peer will help to any vertical in life , and espacially MONEY....

then their logic will start to work and ask how one peer/wallet send money to other peer/wallet.....

after they know how peer to peer file sharing work which peer to peer money its the same with twist which called blockchain

Blockchain is an entirely different tech compared to bitcoin now, and most people, especially newbies tend to still interchange one from the other. In laymen's terms and as concise as possible, this is my definition of the blockchain:

A method of storing data through the use of blocks of data connected to a chain that continues indefinitely until the processing of data stops, or the addition of new data halts.

If you're going to explain it or tell this to a newbie (someone who doesn't really have an idea about blockchain), more question will come up to their minds and will still get confused about blockchain. I think videos on youtube can help them a lot since it's easier to visualize because of the pictures and illustration that some youtube content has.
The explanation is also helpful but they just have to widen their understanding when reading it.

I don't think that short 10-second definitions will work on noobs. I mean, we can try to make these short and precise definitions that will seem very easy for us, but then try to talk with someone who really doesn't know much about that stuff. I had a talk with my grandfather about Bitcoin. He's around 75, but he is no stranger to complicated things: he's a very good nuclear physicist. Anyway, he was asking about Bitcoin, and his son who is finishing a Ph.D. in something IT-related was also there, helping to explain Bitcoin and Blockchain to my grandpa. IMO my uncle's explanations were very short and easy. But grandfather asked questions like "how can something I can't even touch be money", "is there a bank governing Bitcoin", "how is this Bitcoin printed" and other things like that. After about 10 minutes of talking, he proudly concluded: "Well, now I understand it's something very shady".
So next time you try to make a definition for noobs, imagine a person that doesn't trust the Internet, thinks that fiat is great, volatility is catastrophic and banks rule.

Blockchain is a place were there is recorded every bitcoin transaction and the value in bitcoins of that transaction. That is Blockchain is a list of transactions in bitcoin made until now.

Blockchain gives the proof that that transaction in bitcoin (between 2 bitcoin addresses) has been made and it can be read by every person in the world.

In approx 10 years of existence there was no error in Blockchain, every transaction recorded in Blockchain arrived at its destination.

i would avoid using "peer to peer file sharing" as an example because it is going to only mislead people who want to understand bitcoin and the blockchain technology that it uses.
most methods of file sharing isn't completely decentralized or even peer to peer. for instance in many cases like MegaUpload and sites like that, you reply on a centralized database. or even in Bittorrent you are still using trackers and also sites that have the torrent hashes which introduce centralization.
none of it exists in bitcoin.