[1 BTC Bounty] What is Bitcoin? *ENDED*

[CurbsideProphet]

The ability for anyone in the world to move money using military-grade cryptography.

(Based on a quote by David Perry, "It feels really surreal to use military-grade cryptography to pay for Schnitzel")

[1715058226]

1715058226

[1715058226]

1715058226

[BlueNote]

If you want an accurate, concise, and boring description of what it actually is:

A shared ledger on which people cryptographically exchange values which act as a money substitute.

[Stunna]

Forget defining Bitcoin, I offer something much more valuable -- correction to your sig.

"♛ "Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it." -MT  @PrimeDice"

Don't fret!  Censorship lets you have your stake, eat & even gamble it away.  At worst, it won't let you talk about it, but common etiquette should stop you from talking with your mouth full.
PM me for BTC addy.

Have to admit I definitely got a kick out of that 

[glub0x]

bitcoin is a new technology, it allow money to circulate very fast with low to no fees and no fraud, Bitcoin is to money what internet has been to communication.

[QuestionAuthority]

Bitcoin is a cooperative money network allowing people to exchange value worldwide without business or government interference for almost no cost to the user.

[Este Nuno]

Bitcoin is an online currency backed by the most powerful computer network in the world and is limited, secure, and completely controlled by you.

[johnyj]

Freedom

[Punkonjunk]

these analogies are terrible because they are apples and oranges half the time. It's like X was to Y doesn't solve anything.


Bitcoin is an anonymous, decentralized, unregulated digital currency  and is protected from duplication by proof of it's existence from communal "work" or calculations similar to password cracking (or very simply, complex math that only computers are equipped for); the value is determined entirely by the holders of the coins.

I can't imagine a way to simplify it better than that.

[CtrlAltBernanke420]

Hey all,

I get asked often what Bitcoin is and I find it really difficult to give a concise answer . I'd love a great one line reply to get people interested and wanting to know more. Looking for something short and direct that still manages to convey enough information.

I'd look favorably towards any creative answers. This includes any sort of illustration/art, post a short description to go with it.

Will announce the winner in 2 weeks from now. No need to leave your address, I'll just message you if you win and announce it on this thread

Good luck and Thanks!

-Stunna

Bitcoin is a peer to peer currency, that acts also as an instant payment system, removing the banks, the supply of bitcoins is currently at about 11.5million and will never be more than 21million, this has the potential to revolutionize the world and the economy.. Gov'ts are considering it.

[Bakemono]

Bitcoin is a digital currency in which literally everything , from managing the instant transactions to issuing new money
happens by you and the millions of people already using it.

[ktttn]

Bitcoin is the decentralized means of production providing the redistribution of encrypted wealth.
Bitcoin is what aleins from the future will use to do trading of surreal numbers of quantum particles.
If Bitcoin goes down to $0.01/1BTC, yay; if Bitcoin goes up to $100,000,000/BTC, yay.
Bitcoin is a bunch of 1's and 0's that you can buy stuff with.
Bitcoin is a program that: firstly, keeps track of big numbers, secondly, sends transactions that only work if those numbers are the right numbers, and thirdly, lists your and everyone else's working transactions on a really big number.
Bitcoin is reverse multiplication on forex roids.
Bitcoin=Bittorrent/Wikileaks*Kickstarter^Banking-Taxes.

[BorderBits]

Bitcoins: Buy high, sell low, and still make a profit!

Bitcoin:  A decentralized¹ currency² with low transactions fees³ running on a secured⁴ network that can handle tens of transaction per second⁵.

1.  Decentralized in that one person programs it and 5 mining pool operators decide on changes.
2.  Few people use it as a currency and most only reference it in relation to its USD value.
3.  A regressive transaction fee; and low fees paid on a transaction can make that transaction take hours to process. 
4.  Just watch out for "hackers" and Chinese relic collectors.
5.  Don't even think about having a successful business that generates lots of transactions.

[lch]

Bitcoin is a medium of exchange, native to the internet that can be divided into an infinite amount.

[LogicalUnit]

A Bitcoin is one unit of a digital payment system, generated by computing power, exchanged freely over the internet, with mathematical security.

[willphase]

for those who have zero experience with computers - I go with the 'book' analogy which is something like this:

Imagine a village wants to make payments between villagers easy - so they create a huge book where all the payments from all participants take place.  In order for Farmer Bob to make a payment to Blacksmith Charlie, he writes 'I pay charlie 1 coin' and signs it with his unforgeable signature (imagine a very elaborate stamp that cannot be forged like Chinese emperor's used to use).  These are being written into the book and around every ten minutes the village picks one villager at random (via a lottery) to get to turn the page of the book, and because he has to come all the way to the village hall, he gets to finish the page with a payment to himself granting him some coins.  So, you can't go back and edit the transactions once the page has been turned.  Everyone in the village can go into the town hall and view the book to see who owns which coins.

So it's possible to reconstruct who owns which bitcoins by just looking through the book, but you can't edit them once the page has been turned, and you can't forge people's payments because of the signatures.

Will

[Cyrus]

Bitcoin - money v2.0

[LeChatNoir]

What is bitcoin?
A Ponzi scheme!

[Mabsark]

Bitcoin is the Internet Money.

[cheesylard]

It's like a huge torrent file that is just a .txt file with a list of wallets and their balances. Each wallet has its own hidden password that can be used to rewrite the .txt file and "transfer" funds to another wallet.

If people want to know more, you can go into deeper detail and relate how the miners verify the passwords are legit and actually write to the file, and why it takes time (confirmations) to make sure a transaction is legit, cause all of the other people's .txt files need to sync.

[shawshankinmate37927]

Bitcoin is the cure that will save the global economy from the cancer of central banking.

or another variation:

Bitcoin is the cure that will allow you to survive the cancer of central banking.


Edit:  Since chemotherapy has adverse side effects associated with it, I decided to replace "chemotherapy" with "cure".