Your friends talk about Bitcoin, read some Bitcoin articles, and listen to the grumbling about Bitcoin, but you still don’t understand anything.
Bitcoin Talk Kit: Chat About BTC like an Expert. It doesn’t have to be this way forever unless you don’t care. Keeping quiet in a conversation about cryptocurrencies doesn’t have many advantages. However, one can learn valuable things. But, come on, it’s not a crime either. You might be a little intimidated by this crypto stuff. We assure you it’s not rocket science or anything like that. Of course, some parts of Bitcoin have their quirks. Stop worrying because knowing everything about it won’t be necessary. We want to give you the basic kit that will allow you to get by when cryptocurrencies come up.
Bitcoin for beginners
As Bitcoin is the “prima donna” of cryptocurrencies, it must know its birth date. Well, the cryptocurrency known as “Bitcoin” appeared in 2008. The word bitcoin comes from the combination of “bit,” which in turn means “binary digit,” or binary digit, with the word “coin,” which means currency.
Who invented Bitcoin?
As for its creator, we have already reached the year 2022, and the father of Bitcoin remains a great unknown. No one knows yet who Satoshi Nakamoto is, as the person who published the document outlining how Bitcoin works for the first time called himself.
An Australian named Craig Wright publicly claims Satoshi Nakamoto’s identity as his own. And there is a whole gossip around Wright, among the most scandalous in the crypto world, that you should also know about.
The “Nakamoto” affair
Let’s get straight to the point. Since 2016 Wright has said he is Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, but nobody believes him, and he can’t prove it. David Kleiman, his alleged partner in the cryptocurrency project, passed away.
Kleiman’s family claims from Craight Wright part of the fortune in bitcoins they mined together (we’ll tell you about the mining). The amount of bitcoins, by some estimations, is about 1.1 billion.
The current price of Bitcoin, $20,700, is equivalent to an almost unpronounceable amount. Well, the Kleimans take Wright to court and lose. Wright keeps all the coins but can’t prove he is the elusive Satoshi Nakamoto.
Bitcoin is also BTC
You’ve seen those country currencies have a label or identifier. That is the “ticker.” Thus, U.S. dollars use the USD ticker, Japanese yen the JPY ticker, and the European Community’s euro uses EUR.
Cryptocurrencies also have tickers. Bitcoin’s ticker is BTC; on some Internet sites, you can see it as XBT. Crypto tickers can have up to five characters.
Bitcoin miners
Watch out for this. Bitcoin was conceived as a peer-to-peer value exchange network by electronic means, meaning that by using the Internet, anyone could directly send or receive value (money), represented in this case by bitcoins.
Directly means without the participation of intermediaries, i.e., financial institutions, private banks, and the like. I buy something from you, pay you, or sell you something, and you pay me—simple, direct, without barriers, conditions, or government supervision.
Bitcoin Mining is the name given to the creation of bitcoins. The Bitcoin network involves miners who help keep the network operational. They manage computers called “nodes,” which run the Bitcoin software.
Each node receives BTC transactions and stores them in a data structure called a “block.” When the block is complete, the system adds it to the original database, the blockchain.
But, to do this, the node needs to solve a mathematical problem of some complexity. It gets “permission” to add the current block to the chain if it solves it. In doing so, the miner receives a reward for his work, coming as bitcoins created by the software.
In this mining thing, you will also hear terms like “hashing,” “mining difficulty,” “halving,” or “mempool,” which we will leave for a future opportunity.
Blockchains
Now you know how cryptocurrency transactions from a blockchain. You can also include other types of information or records. The “blocks” are linked together through mathematical formulas, putting a secure seal on each.
The subject of blockchains is quite extensive so we will leave it here now. From here, we pick up the word “blockchain.”
Why “cryptocurrency”?
Crypto comes from “cryptography.” Using cryptography, you can protect the privacy of your data. For example, when you talk to your friends via chat using keywords, they use a simple type of cryptography.
Blockchain development uses Cryptography, which is why we use the term cryptocurrency.
What is a wallet?
You carry your money in different formats: bills, coins, or credit cards. You store it inside your pocket, in a safe, or at the bank. Crypto Wallets serve the same function as cryptocurrencies. They keep them safely, at least in theory.
To receive or send crypto payments, you must use a “wallet address.” Addresses are very long codes that identify the sender or receiver of a payment. With the first characters of this code, it is possible to determine what type of cryptocurrency you are using in the transaction, BTC or some other.
There are several types of wallets: online (called “hot wallets“), offline (called “cold wallets“), and paper wallets, which fall into the second type. Cold wallets are the most secure, as they are beyond the reach of hackers. Even so, it is necessary to take all possible precautions because stealing funds from this type of wallet has already been possible.
Pizza Day
Although we have a lot left to share with you, we will say goodbye to this Bitcoin Talk Kit with Pizza Day, or the story of the most expensive pizza in the world. By May 22, 2010, BTC was still worth virtually nothing. Because there were two of them, purchasing these pizzas is considered the first commercial transaction made with Bitcoin.
On that date, Laszlo Hanyecz, a software developer from Florida, paid no less than 10,000 bitcoins for the home delivery of two pizzas from the Papa John’s chain.
A few months after Laszlo gobbled up his pizzas, the value of BTC first came to match that of the U.S. dollar. Yes, by that time, the programmer would have spent $10,000 on two pizzas, leaving his name forever inscribed in the history of Bitcoin. Every May 22, the crypto community now celebrates “Pizza Day.”