The ABCs of digital assets — Part 1: Bitcoin

Youssef
2 min readJan 28, 2018

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If you’re new to cryptos then this is the right place to start and learn what is this all about! Maybe you heard about Bitcoin from the news and you’ve always wondered what is a Bitcoin. Well you’re going to find out in this article and in the next ones where I will try to tackle most of the questions a new entry in the space might ask.

Okay, so what is Bitcoin?

Before I tackle this one, let’s look at the history first. After the 2007–08 financial crisis and the collapse of Lehman Brothers trust in these institutions have pushed many to think about potential alternatives that could make that power shift needed from these big banks directly in the hands of the people.

Right after this period a revolutionary invention emerged: Bitcoin.

Satoshi Nakamoto, an uknown developer, announced in a whitepaper (that you can find at https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf ) that he has invented

“A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.”

This system is based on technology called blockchain that relies on math to create trust between different parties without therefore the need of intermediaries (like banks for instance). The code is open source and can be audited by anyone and it has proven to be solid and very difficult to hack.

It has now a track record of 9 years in which it has been proven to be a secure and reliable solution. This is why it’s trusted and used as a store of value like gold. This associated the denomination of “digital gold” to Bitcoin.

But this is not the end of the story, it’s just the beginning!

TO BE CONTINUED

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