What Is A Bitcoin?

Good question as many of you have already heard about this form of cryptocurrency.  Crypto-what?  Yes, currency.  To be more specific, it is a digital currency and not a physical one such a a dollar bill or coin.  You can, however, carry these in your pocket in the form of a "wallet".  How is this done?  There are several online sources to create these wallets which are essentially a digital bank account with a unique number.

How Do Bitcoins Work?

This is the interesting part.  You can use these bitcoins to exchange for goods or services just as you would any other form of global currency.  Instead of physically exchanging paper bills or coins, you will be transferring these digitally.  The wallet for these bitcoins can be stored on any digital media such as a smartphone, SD card, or USB thumb drive.

Each time that there is a bitcoin transaction, it gets recorded into a publicly available ledger known as a block chain.  To record this block chain, a series of mathematical computations invented in 2008 by Satoshi  Nakamoto are carried out by a complex network of computers.  Specially designed computers are used to "mine" these bitcoins by verifying and recording payment transactions into the public ledger.  Since the ledger is public and not owned by any one repository, it is considered an unregulated virtual currency.

Why Would I Want Bitcoins?

More and more online retailers and merchants worldwide are accepting payments in the form of bitcoin.  As this use continues to grow, it could become a more universally accepted form of payment.  There are certain attractions to using bitcoins as transaction fees are often less than those imposed by credit card processing companies.  One caution to users of bitcoin is that their purchases may not be protected by refund rights or chargebacks that regulated currencies can offer.

How Do I Get Started With Bitcoin?

The first place to start would be to open a wallet at a secure online bitcoin exchange such as www.coinbase.com.  On here, you can buy, sell, send, receive, and store bitcoins in a secure fashion and even create backups for your account.  You can also download a wallet app on your smartphone for convenient access to your bitcoins.  Try it out today!