“A digital or virtual currency that uses peer-to-peer technology to facilitate instant payments. Bitcoin is a type of alternative currency known as a cryptocurrency, which uses cryptography for security, making it difficult to counterfeit.”
Bitcoin is the first decentralized peer-to-peer payment network powered 100% by its users without the involvement of a central authority or middlemen. For the average user, Bitcoin could be considered to be “cash for the Internet”, and is considered to be the most prominent, triple-entry bookkeeping system in existence.
Bitcoin is a form of digital currency, created and held electronically – with regulation unit generation dictated by encryption techniques. No one controls it. Bitcoins are not printed, like dollars or euros – but rather they are produced by actual people, and increasingly businesses, running computers all around the world, using software that solves mathematical problems. When you pay for something with bitcoin, or get paid with bitcoin, your transaction is recorded on the ledger, or blockchain. Computers then compete to confirm the transaction by solving complex mathematical equations, and the winner is rewarded with more bitcoins – which is known as “mining”.