bitllionaire
Legendary
 Offline
Activity: 1120
Merit: 1000
|
 |
March 06, 2015, 12:04:06 AM |
|
bitcoin actually is nothing in your computer, bitcoins are only in the blockchain and in your computer you have the keys to move bitcoins in the blockchain
|
|
|
|
|
|
Agestorzrxx
|
|
March 06, 2015, 02:26:25 AM |
|
Bitcoin is a account book which record which address owns how many coins.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Btcvilla
|
|
March 06, 2015, 03:08:44 AM |
|
A private key that allows you to control a bitcoin wallet, nothing more, nothing less.
|
|
|
|
|
remotemass
Legendary
Offline
Activity: 1120
Merit: 1017
ASMR El Salvador
|
|
March 06, 2015, 03:53:01 AM
Last edit: March 06, 2015, 04:08:04 AM by remotemass |
|
Bitcoins only exist as a balance associated with a bitcoin address. What you actually need to keep is the private key, that is like a password that allows you to spend from the corresponding bitcoin address. It is made of 256 bits, that is, 256 zeros and ones. A private key is a secret code which allows the user to prove his ownership of his Bitcoins. Every Bitcoin address has a matching private key, which is saved in the wallet file of the person who owns the balance. The private key is mathematically related to the Bitcoin address, and is designed so that the Bitcoin address can be calculated from the private key, but importantly, the same cannot be done in reverse. When a bitcoin address is "created" you are not actually creating it. You just pick a random private key, that is, a random string of 256 bits, and the corresponding bitcoin address will be yours. See this video for better understanding: The Amazing Math Of Bitcoin's Private Keyshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZloHVKk7DHk |
{ Imagine a sequence of bits generated from the first decimal place of the square roots of whole integers that are irrational numbers. If the decimal falls between 0 and 5, it's considered bit 0, and if it falls between 5 and 10, it's considered bit 1. This sequence from a simple integer count of contiguous irrationals and their logical decimal expansion of the first decimal place is called the 'main irrational stream.' Our goal is to design a physical and optical computing system system that can detect when this stream starts matching a specific pattern of a given size of bits. bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=166760.0 } Satoshi did use a friend class in C++ and put a comment on the code saying: "This is why people hate C++".
|
|
|
|
Beliathon
|
|
March 06, 2015, 04:14:09 AM |
|
This video (and every other one from that YTer) is excellent learning material. |
|
|
|
Herbert2020
Legendary
Offline
Activity: 1946
Merit: 1137
|
|
March 06, 2015, 05:30:34 AM |
|
Hello folks.
Sorry, this must be a very silly question, but it's a doubt i have for quite some time.
What is a Bitcoin when it's stored in my wallet? Is it a findable archive in my computer? or it is something more abstract?
Thank you.
think of it as money placed in your bank account, bitcoin in your wallet is like some numbers on a piece of paper which bank gave you. is that abstract? |
Weak hands have been complaining about missing out ever since bitcoin was $1 and never buy the dip.
Whales are those who keep buying the dip.
|
|
|
arnab
Newbie
Offline
Activity: 28
Merit: 0
|
|
March 06, 2015, 06:02:46 AM |
|
Hello folks.
Sorry, this must be a very silly question, but it's a doubt i have for quite some time.
What is a Bitcoin when it's stored in my wallet? Is it a findable archive in my computer? or it is something more abstract?
Thank you.
|
|
|
|
|
ezeminer
Legendary
Offline
Activity: 2184
Merit: 1118
Lie down. Have a cookie
|
|
March 06, 2015, 06:26:44 AM |
|
Bitcoins only exist as a balance associated with a bitcoin address. What you actually need to keep is the private key, that is like a password that allows you to spend from the corresponding bitcoin address. It is made of 256 bits, that is, 256 zeros and ones. A private key is a secret code which allows the user to prove his ownership of his Bitcoins. Every Bitcoin address has a matching private key, which is saved in the wallet file of the person who owns the balance. The private key is mathematically related to the Bitcoin address, and is designed so that the Bitcoin address can be calculated from the private key, but importantly, the same cannot be done in reverse. When a bitcoin address is "created" you are not actually creating it. You just pick a random private key, that is, a random string of 256 bits, and the corresponding bitcoin address will be yours. See this video for better understanding: The Amazing Math Of Bitcoin's Private Keyshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZloHVKk7DHk This is really useful for my english paper  |
|
|
|
jonald_fyookball
Legendary
Offline
Activity: 1302
Merit: 1004
Core dev leaves me neg feedback #abuse #political
|
|
March 12, 2015, 01:16:54 PM |
|
Bitcoins only exist as a balance associated with a bitcoin address.
even the "balance" isn't stored as a unit of data. it too is derived from spent and unspent transaction inputs and outputs from the blockchain. |
|
|
|
keelba
Member
Offline
Activity: 104
Merit: 10
|
|
March 12, 2015, 02:30:14 PM |
|
The way I try to explain it to less technically savvy people is like this:
Imagine a gigantic wall made of hollow glass bricks. They're clear on your side and opaque on the reverse side. Each brick has a unique number identifier on it. And each brick has money inside it or perhaps no money at all. Are you imagining this big wall? Good. Now imagine that anyone in the world can walk up to any brick they like and see how much money is inside. Since this is usuable by the whole world, you cannot use ordinary US dollars, or Chinese RenMinBi, or Russian rubles. You would first have to buy special tokens. These tokens all have the same value but each world currency would buy a different amount of tokens. There is even a slot where anyone can put any amount of tokens they like into any brick they like without the knowledge or consent of the owner of that brick. There is no way of knowing who owns which brick(s) and there is no way to get the tokens out from this side of the wall. Attached to each brick is a log that shows each time tokens were put in and taken out and records which bricks the tokens came from and where they went to, but not the owners of those bricks, which, as I said before, no one actually knows.
On the reverse side of the wall, all of the bricks are opaque but there is a keyhole in each which opens with the correct key. If you had the key and knew which brick to open you could remove any amount of tokens from it. It would not matter who rightfully "owns" it. It only matters if you have the key. (Although you could try any random key on as many keyholes as you like, the possibility of it actually working is so minute that it essentially is impossible. You would have better odds of picking the winning lottery numbers on the next 1,000 drawings in a row!) Multiple people, however, could have the key if the "owner" either gave it to them or was careless with his and allowed them to copy it. I say the wall is opaque from the other side because there is no way of seeing who is removing tokens from each brick, you can only see where the tokens move to and from. If you "owned" a brick, you could give your public address to someone and they could deposit tokens into it but they would have no way of getting those tokens back without the private key to open that brick and remove them.
Think of the blockchain this way. It exists "out there" and anyone in the world can see it and can see the balances of each address. But no one knows exactly who owns which address. The public key is the address of that brick. The private key is the key that opens that brick. And "bitcoin" is simply the unit of measurement or the name we give to the numbers of tokens that make up each account. (I know this is not 100% accurate but for sake of simplicity I explain this way.) In the real world you need three things to own and spend Bitcoin: a public key, a private key, and some sort of software connected to the Internet that knows how to interact with the Blockchain. This is what your wallet is. It is the software that "talks" to the Blockchain. You can give it one or any number of public/private pairs you like and it will take care of the rest. It is not necessary to back up a wallet. The only thing you actually have to back up are the keys, which are just a unique series of letters and numbers or, in reality, two unfathomably huge numbers. There is no limit to how many addresses you could own. If I ever sent or received Bitcoin from "you" then I could remember that you owned that address and can now see all of your transaction history if I like. With some effort, I could trace every bitcoin you ever sent and where it was sent to. As a side note, work is currently being done on "mixers" which scramble this information preventing any way of tracing transactions back to their source.
You can always change, remove, or install a new wallet without worrying about transferring balances from one wallet to the other. The only things you would have to transfer are the keys. The balance does not exist on your computer nor in the wallet. It exists only as the sum of all transactions attached to the public address on the Blockchain, this nebulous ledger which exists "out there" and is maintained by the collective agreement of a myriad of computers and math. The Bitcoin protocol and the Blockchain seem to be, at least so far, unbreakable. The real danger in Bitcoin is currently in the wallet. If someone had access to your computer or smart phone, they could potentially have access to your wallet and there would be no recourse and no one to complain to if your account was cleaned out. This is why I go to such great lengths to explain the basics behind the Blockchain. Because ultimately, security is up to the user, not the software. A Bitcoin wallet can be the most secure software ever created but if you keep your public/private pair written on a piece of paper in your leather wallet in your pocket, then you would be at risk.
|
|
|
|
|
|
