๐Ÿ’ฐ Did you really just do 10 questions and not talk about BTC?

Think of Bitcoin as an open monetary network and the blockchain as a public decentralized ledger that is maintained by millions across the globe. This ensures that no single person, government, or authority can shut Bitcoin down.

As long as there is at least a single copy of the node, Bitcoin continues to be around. Miners maintaining the network validate transactions and ensure the network is up and running and are financially incentivized to guard it.

What does a transaction on Bitcoin look like?

Every time a transaction occurs miners across the globe rush to validate this transaction, when they do so successfully, they are able to charge a transaction fee for the same. A Bitcoin mine.

This is different from our traditional banking system where we rely on a central authority to protect our wealth & help carry out transactions.

Bitcoin can also be split into something called Satoshi or SATs. (ย A satoshi is the smallest unit of aย bitcoin, equivalent to 100 millionth of aย bitcoin.) This also solves our problem with splitting value, the kind we saw with gold and the barter exchange system.

As the year's pass, the number of Bitcoins that can be mined keeps reducing i.e every 4 years there is an event called the halvening. This means that the amount of Bitcoin rewarded to the miners for securing the network reduces by half every 4 years. Thus reducing the issuance rate. This reduction in supply over the years increases scarcity.

A simple rule of thumb:

High Demand + Low supply = Increase in prices.

This applies to Bitcoin as well. Bitcoin has a definite supply of 21 Million BTC, of which 18 Million+ BTC have already been mined. The last Bitcoin will only be mined in the year 2140.

Here's a video to get you going

Here's an article for a complete deep dive

You can't go long without Crypto Twitter

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Have a happy learning! โœŒ๏ธ