Bitcoin Explained with Emoji

Part 1: Making Money

Tess Rinearson

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Photo by abigail low on Unsplash

Bitcoin is a revolutionary way to save or spend digital money, and has the potential to transform other areas of our lives, too. You also don’t need to be a mathematician or cryptographer to understand it. When you start to see how the system comes full circle, you may just be delighted.

Let’s say I send you a movie over the internet. I attach a file to an email, hit send, and you have it moments later. You can download and watch the movie, or delete it. You can do what you want with it.

But keep this in mind: I still have a copy of that interaction.

This is how digital information typically moves around the internet. You don’t really transfer content, you copy it. And so far, this has worked out pretty well: Although it may not be legal or fair, copying a song or movie is unlikely to devastate the economy.

But now think about copying money.

At first, using email to make infinite digital money might seem attractive, but what happens once everyone starts doing it? There would be rampant inflation and the economy would fall down. If I send you a dollar, it’s important that I don’t get to keep a copy.

Traditionally, in the world of wire transfers and debit cards, digital money is tracked centrally to prevent duplication. A database — at your bank, for example — verifies who owns what. This system relies on centralized authority, which is a familiar concept, so we “get it.” Of course, that central authority has complete control over your money.

But what if there’s another way? What if, instead of relying on an fallible centralized authority to assure us of who has what, we rely on distributed authority that isn’t controlled by a single party? What if our money has value, not because we trust the power of a government to back it, but because we trust the power of math?

This takes us to Bitcoin.

Introducing Bitcoin

Bitcoin is a system of digital currency not associated with any government or institution.

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Tess Rinearson

VP of Engineering, Tendermint Core. (Previously: @Chain, @Medium.)