Best Explanations of Bitcoin and Ethereum
Bitcoin, a decentralized digital currency dominated by white people , seemed about to disappear after every scandal, crash or hack. But eight years later, it is not only growing, but accelerating, tripling from January to more than $ 45 billion . And it’s not the only cryptocurrency; Competitors include Litecoin, Dogecoin and Ethereum (the currency that supports smart contracts).
Bitcoin’s high volatility makes it terrible by traditional foreign exchange standards, a fantastic investment vehicle and an exciting cultural experiment. This is a dramatic rethink of how a currency can work and is very difficult and unfamiliar to the average person. Over the years, hundreds of news outlets have tried to explain this, which is good because it often takes multiple explanations to figure it out. Here are some of the best, starting with the three most important guides.
- How Bitcoin Works in Five Minutes : A Simple Guide That Gets More Technical. Just get off when the ride gets too fast.
- The History of Bitcoin : A Timeline of Bitcoin’s Invention, Growth, and Major Hacks.
- Ethereum Beginner’s Guide : Describes a new blockchain with applications outside of the digital currency, including auto-executing contracts, identity management, computer sharing, DRM, and more.
- Lifehacker’s Guide to Bitcoin : A Practical Guide to Mining, Buying and Using Bitcoins
- How Blockchain Makes Digital Transactions Work Like Physical Transactions : A math-free guide to how cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin track transactions using the blockchain. Explains how to “give” someone a digital object, not just copy it.
- How Blockchains Record Transactions : A slightly more technical explanation of how cryptocurrency users process transactions without a central authority.
- How smart contracts work : compares cryptocurrency to a digital vending machine, where the “rules” of the transaction are built into the machine itself. Great explanation of the use of blockchain besides currency.
- Smart Contracts for Programmers : A more technical explanation of Ethereum.
- Why Bitcoin Is Helpful Even With Price Volatile : How To Use Bitcoin As An Online Payment Method For Traditional Currencies.
- How People Steal Bitcoins : Explains how hackers have stolen millions of dollars worth of bitcoins over and over again .
- How to keep Bitcoin safe : The pros and cons of the best ways to keep your cryptocurrency safe (usually physical storage).
- How Bitcoin pays people to register transactions : Explains the “hidden transaction fees” when transferring Bitcoin; also read the response post: “US dollars are a terrible way to pay for things.”