Bitcoin: The Beginner’s Guide to Cryptocurrency

Bitcoin is a digital currency invented by an anonymous creator who goes only by the name Satoshi Nakamoto. Bitcoin has grown in popularity over recent years, with many people interested in acquiring bitcoin for themselves. The problem is that most people don’t know what exactly bitcoins are , how to buy bitcoins. This blog post will answer all of those questions and more.

What is Bitcoin?

There are many definitions of bitcoin, but the easiest one to understand is that it’s a digital currency. Unfortunately, people tend not to explain things because they assume that everybody has a basic understanding of what a currency is, so let’s skip straight over all those boring details and get into what makes Bitcoin different from regular currencies like dollars or euros.

Bitcoin was invented as an alternative for traditional currencies because there were problems with them being impractical in today’s world. For example, inflation rates change every day and sometimes even several times per hour, making holding onto cash risky since you don’t know whether your savings will be valued at the same amount tomorrow. This problem also exists if you have too much physical cash stored away; if you’re a criminal and want to avoid attracting attention from the police, it’s hard to keep your ill-gotten gains.

Bitcoin was created as an attempt at solving both of these problems. Although at the same time, there is only a limited number of bitcoins in existence (21 million), their value will never go down because they can be divided into smaller parts (the smallest divisible amount is 0.00000001 BTC). This means that people won’t lose money just by keeping it stored away for more extended periods, or criminals don’t have to worry about carrying large amounts around with them when transporting cash between locations since even very high sums could be represented by something small enough to fit in one hand without looking suspicious.

What Makes Bitcoin Different?

Three essential things make Bitcoin different from regular currencies: it isn’t controlled by a central authority, everybody can use it, and the blockchain is used as proof of ownership.

How to buy bitcoins?

There are three different ways to buy bitcoin; using an online exchange service, meeting in person, or sending/receiving money through the post.

Using an Online Exchange Service to Buy Bitcoins

The easiest way is by starting with one of many popular cryptocurrency exchanges; websites like Coinbase allow you to buy and sell bitcoin quickly on their website for prices set around current market value. Then, you can deposit your new bitcoins into a digital wallet that exists either in the cloud (like Dropbox) or on your computer if it’s powerful enough to handle running a full node that verifies transactions made on the blockchain. The most significant risk when doing this is that there have been cases where people buy bitcoin online-only never to turn up since they’ve been scammed, so it’s essential to find an exchange with a good reputation and never store more bitcoin online than you’re willing to lose.

Meeting in Person for Bitcoin Exchange

Another way of buying bitcoins is by meeting up with somebody who wants to sell theirs in person; this can be done through the websites LocalBitcoins and Paxful or physically going somewhere like your bank branch where people usually go during opening hours. However, this method is hazardous since there have been cases where buyers got robbed when they met up with someone pretending to be interested in selling their bitcoins.

So instead, they just took off with all their cash while leaving behind nothing but an empty wallet. So never do these types of exchanges, and always take at least one other person with you when doing it in person, preferably somebody already familiar with cryptocurrencies.

Sending/Receiving Money through the Post for Bitcoin Exchange

The last way of buying bitcoins without using an online exchange service is by sending money to another person’s bank account and having them deposit bitcoin into your wallet once they’ve received it; this process can be done both ways, so people can send their fiat currency back if they don’t want to keep hold of any cryptocurrency at all. 

Conclusion 

Now that you know how to buy bitcoins and store them securely, continue to learn about the different ways of using cryptocurrencies in your daily life.