What is Bitcoin
The price of Bitcoin has been soaring, especially after Musk bought a large amount of Bitcoin. Many people are also considering whether to invest all their savings in Bitcoin. So what is Bitcoin?
Bitcoin is a virtual currency. As a means of payment, Bitcoin does not have paper money or coins, but is based on cryptographic calculations. Bitcoin's architecture is decentralized, so its operation does not require banks or central banks to manage and control it. Therefore, Bitcoin can be used under the same conditions worldwide, which is completely different from the currency system to date. The encryption algorithm hides the identity and whereabouts of the user. In January 2009, a person with the pseudonym "Satoshi Nakamoto" published an open source program for Bitcoin.
How to get Bitcoin?
Bitcoin can be obtained in a variety of ways: by buying it legally with regular currency on an online platform, by selling goods or services for Bitcoin, or by producing Bitcoin yourself as a "miner".
What is the minimum amount of Bitcoin that can be purchased?
Bitcoin is measured in satoshis, and 1 Bitcoin is equal to 100 million satoshis.
From the current technical point of view, under the Bitcoin data structure, one Bitcoin can be divided into 8 decimal places, so the smallest unit of Bitcoin is 0.00000001 Bitcoin, but the amount cannot be that small when trading.
At present, the common minimum trading unit of virtual currency trading platforms is 0.01 Bitcoin.
Nowadays, the virtual currency transaction service fee also requires 0.01 bitcoin, but the transfer fee paid to the exchange may cost around 120 yuan.
The minimum value of Bitcoin is 0.00001, which is not enough to cover the network cost. If you just want to buy it for fun, many external organizations may have certain restrictions, so it is unlikely that you will be allowed to buy Bitcoin worth dozens of yuan.
Moreover, the regulations of different platforms are also different, and the minimum purchase amount depends on the depth of the trading pair.
The relationship between Bitcoin and blockchain
Many people confuse the concepts of Bitcoin and blockchain, thinking that Bitcoin is blockchain. In fact, this is not the case. What is the relationship between the two?
Blockchain is a distributed ledger. Its biggest feature is decentralization. It can be simply understood as a decentralized ledger that everyone can view and join. Bitcoin uses blockchain technology to achieve value storage and transactions.
Blockchain is divided into three categories of ledgers, namely:
1. Public ledger. Any individual or group can send transactions and participate in the consensus process;
2. Private ledger. Only the general ledger technology of blockchain is used for bookkeeping;
3. Joint blockchain. Multiple pre-selected nodes are designated as ledgers by a group. The relationship between Bitcoin and blockchain is actually very simple. It can be summarized in one sentence: blockchain is the underlying technology of Bitcoin. In other words, Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, and cryptocurrency can use blockchain technology, but blockchain technology is not exclusive to cryptocurrency.
The relationship between Bitcoin and Ethereum
Bitcoin was born as the world's first cryptocurrency in 2009, and Ethereum was launched as a potential cryptocurrency in 2015. Bitcoin and Ethereum are known as giants in the cryptocurrency field.
Although Ethereum is somewhat inferior to Bitcoin, it has some nice features that make it more promising in some major areas.
As a global decentralized financial system, Bitcoin is a payment transaction medium with the ability to become a digital value store. Send Bitcoin at any time and anywhere without involving any third party.
Ethereum, on the other hand, is designed as a platform that facilitates peer-to-peer contracts and applications using its own monetary tool. The founders of Ethereum believe that blockchain technology can be exploited to allow developers to create real applications on it. This is achieved by creating smart contracts and executing them on Ethereum. The currency of the Ethereum platform is mainly to facilitate the work of Ethereum so that developers can build and run decentralized applications, also known as dApps.
Unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum's token (ETH) has no supply cap, at least not yet. Just like fiat currencies, these tokens may also be subject to inflationary trends. Currently, the circulating supply of Ethereum is slightly over 107 million ETH. In the Ethereum system, all transactions that require computing power require payment of ETH. This is precisely because many people currently believe that ETH has great value for the development of cryptocurrencies.
In addition to Bitcoin and Ethereum, there are many other "mainstream currencies" and well-known public chains. You can explore and learn in the non-small currency market value rankings. $BTC $BNB
