Understanding Bitcoin - A Beginner's Guide (With Help from Wikipedia)

Wikipedia's a great place to start when you want to learn about anything. Trouble is bitcoin is so novel, that most people get even more confused when they read the Wikipedia page. With terms like double spending, decentralized computing and cryptocurrency, it often feels like one might need a PhD just to read wikipedia. Our humble goal is to help you get through the first paragraph and get a full grasp of these terms. So, sit back, relax, in due time you'll be understanding this amazing new currency like a bitcoin insider.



This episode (number two) focuses on THE BLOCK CHAIN. What's amazing is that this central term was left out of the Wikipedia paragraph entirely. It would be like talking about Albert Einstein and not mentioning Relativity or E=mc2.



This video is part two of the three part series

For reference, here's Wikpedia's first paragraph on Bitcoin

"Bitcoin is an open source peer-to-peer payment network and digital currency introduced in 2009 by pseudonymous developer "Satoshi Nakamoto". Bitcoin has been called a cryptocurrency because it uses cryptography to secure funds. Transactions transfer bitcoins, the unit of currency, between Bitcoin addresses derived from cryptographic public keys. To spend the funds associated with an address, a user must broadcast a payment message digitally signed with the associated private key. Transactions are verified by a decentralized network of computers all over the world. Specialized computers use a proof-of-work system to prevent people from copying and spending the same bitcoin multiple times, a problem for digital currencies known as double-spending. The operators of these computers, known as "miners", are rewarded with transaction fees and newly minted bitcoins."