[2017-04-13] Hindu: All about bitcoins

[polynesia]

All about bitcoins

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/all-about-bitcoins/article17961273.ece

How to buy, send and invest in the digital currency
“Bitcoin is the beginning of something great: a currency without a government, something necessary and imperative.”
Nassim Taleb, author of The Black Swan


How do people use bitcoins?

It is an electronic or digital currency that works on a peer-to-peer basis. This means that it is decentralised and has no central authority controlling it. Like currency notes, it can be sent from one person to another, but without a central bank or the government attempting to track it. The system depends on cryptography to control the creation of the currency. While no one authority controls the generation of the coins or tracks them, the system itself is designed in such a way that the network maintains a foolproof system of the record of every transaction as well as tracking issuance of the currency.

The beauty of this cryptocurrency is that if you receive a bitcoin from another, you can be as sure of the payment as you would on receiving physical currency notes, with the same anonymity ascribed to it. No one need know if your neighbour spent 2 bitcoins this morning to buy gold, but the transaction is recorded for posterity.

This anonymity is lacking in other forms of digital payment such as online banking or e-wallets.