What is Bitcoin? How Bitcoin works in under 5 minutes.
What is Bitcoin? How Bitcoin works in under 5 minutes.
- 1. What is Bitcoin? by Ryan Shea of onename.io the simplest way to learn how Bitcoin works (in under 5 min)
- 2. Let’s talk about Bitcoin
- 3. But rather than discuss what Bitcoin is...
- 4. Let’s independently design something that resembles Bitcoin
- 5. Yes, we’re going to re-invent Bitcoin
- 6. Here we go...
- 7. Let’s imagine we’re playing a board game like Monopoly
- 8. Where we have tradable assets (such as houses and hotels)
- 9. To trade effectively, we need mutually interchangeable tokens that we all agree have some value
- 10. In other words, we need a currency
- 11. Now, with this currency, we’ll want to easily trade in any denomination, as getting exact change can be a hassle
- 12. And we’ll also want it to be immune to counterfeiting
- 13. So, we’ll avoid paper bills
- 14. And instead, we’ll give ourselves “balances” and record them in a notebook
- 15. Ali Sam Trevor Arianna 100 tokens 100 tokens 100 tokens 100 tokens
- 16. We’ll refer to this list of balances as our ledger
- 17. A book or other collection of financial accounts of a particular type. ledg·er /’lejer/ noun e
- 18. This ledger is “law”
- 19. In other words, one’s balance is whatever the ledger says
- 20. And that’s final
- 21. But what if we have a large game with say 20 or 30 players?
- 22. Then who holds the ledger?
- 23. If only I have the ledger, I can increase my balance and cheat
- 24. So... we give everyone a notebook with a copy of the ledger
- 25. And when balances are updated, the changes are propagated
- 26. Ali Sam Trevor Arianna 100 tokens 100 tokens 100 tokens 100 tokens Ali Sam Trevor Arianna 100 tokens 100 tokens 100 tokens 100 tokens Ali Sam Trevor Arianna 100 tokens 100 tokens 100 tokens 100 tokens Ali Sam Trevor Arianna 100 tokens 100 tokens 100 tokens 100 tokens
- 27. Now, let’s say Ali sells something to Sam for 7.5 tokens
- 28. On Ali’s copy of the ledger, he decreases Sam’s balance by 7.5 and increases his by 7.5
- 29. Ali Sam Trevor Arianna 107.5 tokens 92.5 tokens 100.0 tokens 100.0 tokens
- 30. Then Ali shows everyone his copy and says “make these updates”
- 31. Ali Sam Trevor Arianna Ali Sam Trevor Arianna 107.5 tokens 92.5 tokens 100.0 tokens 100.0 tokens 107.5 tokens 92.5 tokens 100.0 tokens 100.0 tokens Ali Sam Trevor Arianna Ali Sam Trevor Arianna 107.5 tokens 92.5 tokens 100.0 tokens 100.0 tokens 107.5 tokens 92.5 tokens 100.0 tokens 100.0 tokens
- 32. But wait!
- 33. If Ali walks to Arianna to show her the update, how does she know that Sam consented to the exchange?
- 34. Well, Ali simply has Sam sign her paper to express approval of her balance going down
- 35. But there’s another issue
- 36. Relaying changes to 20-30 people every time an exchange occurs can be time-consuming and impractical
- 37. Further, what if we want to have even more players in the game?
- 38. And what if some of them are halfway around the world?
- 39. How do we synchronize all of these paper ledgers?
- 40. Well, we could just move from paper records to digital records
- 41. We’ll have some fancy software that does the ledger syncing for us
- 42. And fancy math to ensure that our digital signatures can’t be forged, & thus nobody can spend our money
- 43. And... we’ll have balances listed next to account numbers instead of names (our ledger needs unique lookup values, and names are not guaranteed to be unique)
- 44. With these modifications, our game will allow millions and even billions of people to transact and trade
- 45. Come to think of it, we could probably even use this system as a real world global currency and payment mechanism
- 46. Notice that with this system, nobody owns it or controls it
- 47. Just as with in-person cash transactions, only the sender and recipient are involved - there are no middle men
- 48. And because there are no middle men, no fees are required
- 49. So for the 1st time, you and I can trade directly online and from anywhere in the world
- 50. We just record a transaction amongst ourselves and broadcast it to the world, proving that it actually occurred
- 51. Our currency and payment system is powerful but simple, and we designed it together
- 52. And we’ll call it Bitcoin
- 53. Thank you Ryan Shea onename.io
- 54. P.S. To get started with Bitcoin, you can create a Bitcoin profile at onename.io
- 55. P.P.S. Remember that fancy sync- ing software we glossed over? That’s actually a big part of what makes Bitcoin so innovative, and it’s made possible by a process called Bitcoin mining
- 56. Coming soon: “What is Bitcoin mining?”
