Blockchain and Cryptocurrency (1/2)
This article is one of a series that explore and explained some key concept of Blockchain and of the field of Cryptocurrency.
Bitcoin the Godfather of all Cryptocurrency.
To be able to fully understand blockchain and Cryptocurrency we need to take a look at Bitcoin. This invention created by a person or an organisation named Satoshi Nakamoto is a pionner in Blockchain and in the field of Cryptocurrency and begin our exploration of these concept without beginning with bitcoin will be an mistake.
An high overview of Bitcoin.
But what is bitcoin? Bitcoin is an trustless, decentralised, and cryptographically secure network used for peer to peer transaction. If you are like me all those word could be complicated to understand so lets breakdown those concept to their simplest form with the help of an exemple.
Lets use the example of Alice and Bob. Alice his currently buying coffee with her debit card from Bob who work and own a coffee shop. This action of exchanging something for money his called an transaction. And when it his executed digitally witch mean that if you electronically send money to another person with the help of an intermediary you are doing a peer to peer transaction.
In the previous chapter we explain that you need and intermediary to be able to do an peer to peer transaction usually refer as p2p. This intermediary is usually an bank or other financial institution and they usually have the money of their customer in one place and you need to put a lot of trust unto your bank giving the fact that they have all you money under their custody which mean if they decided one day to take all you fund or to freeze them they can easily do it. When we say that Bitcoin is decentralised and trustless mean that your money is not under a single entities and that you do not need to trust anyone to keep you fund safe. This decentralisation and trustless is made possible with the help of the blockchain witch we will talk in another article.
The blockchain also bring security in the Bitcoin network the fact that it used hash function and other cryptographic method make bitcoin cryptographically secure witch mean that it his extremely difficult to break or hack.
And finally a network is group interconnected computer that share information between them.
Conclusion
To conclude bitcoin allow it user to send and receive money without the need of a bank you do not need to trust any third party for keeping your money and the blockchain that it his build upon make bitcoin extremely secure and decentralised.
Other resource.
