What is bitcoin
One of most important things about bitcoin is that his source code is totally public as it's part of an open source project. If you are interested on the project, you can find their github repository here
Bitcoin become popular in 2013 when price hits 1000$ and newspapers around the world start talking about it. After then price has been falling until this days, with price around 250$ at 24 July, 2015.
How bitcoin works
Bitcoin uses P2P (peer to peer) network technology, so every transaction (send or receive) is made totally anonymous and transparent for the users. To to start using bitcoin all you need is a wallet, we strongly recommend blockchain or coinbase as web based wallets and multibit for desktop.
Sites accepting bitcoin
Every day more sites noticed about bitcoin importance on internet and
they starting to implement this cryptocurrency, here you have a list
with some of the most important sites that are already accepting payments with bitcoin:
Price
Bitcoin price has been recently raised a lot, hitting almost 300$ due Europe union and Greece crisis.
Future
Some years ago nobody knows bitcoin now at 2015 is totally the opposite,
many people know bitcoin, but they also interested on it. Expectations
for the future are very
high as it's expected that soon bitcoin could be accepted on some
important business like Paypal and eBay. When it happen probably price
will raise a lot.
Bitcoin it's also being used by people as investment for the future as
it's expected to raise sooner or later. Bitcoin experts claims that in
five years one bitcoin will worth over 3000$.
For more information about bitcoin itself you can see this youtbe video below
Bitcoin wallets
What is a bitcoin wallet
Public keys are where you receive your bitcoins and you can share with anyone for a payment. In exchange private keys are not made to be shared, they just are used to sign your transacctions when send bitcoins to somebody. Losing or sharing private keys, may lead to lose your bitcoins.
Because of the importance of private keys, it is a good practice to make backups of your wallets regulary. Make sure you encrypt those backups and save them into a CDrom, USB memory or paper wallet. If you don't encrypt your backups anyone with access to your backups could import your keys into their system and have access to your bitcoins.
Types of wallets
There are three types of wallets: web based, smartphone and desktop wallets. Their names are very descriptive so lets just see a table with their pros and consDesktop
- More features avaible than other wallets
- Higher security (cold wallet)
- Higher privacy due nobody have access to your keys
- Too much options could be "complicated" for unexperienced users
- You have to download the entire bitcoin transacction blocks (more than 30 Gb and increasing every day)
- Your wallet must be re-synchronizated every time you open it, and it is very slow
| Bitcoin-core | Armory | Multibit | Electrum |
Online
- Easy and intuitive thanks to web interface
- Synchronization much faster than desktop wallets
- You don't need to store nothing in your computer but backups
- Access from any computer
- Your private keys may be exposed as they are stored into a database
- You have to enable additional security like 2FA
- Hacker loves bitcoin sites
| Blockchain | Coinbase | Xapo |
Smartphone
- Fast access
- Always accesible
- Smartphones are very insecure enviroment
- If somebody stole your phone you may lose also your bitcoins
- You need Wi-Fi access for some wallets, data plans may not be a good idea for synchronization
| Bither | Green address | Bitcoin wallet | Copay | Ninki | Airbitz |
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