Get to know what Bitcoin is and its drawbacks, advantages, and how to use it
Bitcoin is a digital currency that was created in January 2009 after the collapse of the housing market. It follows the ideas laid out in the whitepaper by the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto and is a pseudonym. The identity of the person who created this technology is still a mystery. Bitcoin offers the promise of lower transaction fees than traditional online payment mechanisms and is operated by a decentralized authority, unlike government-issued currencies. There are no physical bitcoins, only balances kept in a public ledger to which everyone's transparent access, which, along with all Bitcoin transactions, is verified by a large amount of computing power. Bitcoin is not issued or endorsed by any bank or government, and individual bitcoins are not valuable as commodities either. Although not a legal tender, Bitcoin's graphics have high popularity, and have sparked the launch of hundreds of other virtual currencies collectively referred to as Altcoins.