Find answers to recurring questions and myths about Bitcoin.
Nobody owns the Bitcoin network much like no one owns the technology behind email. Bitcoin is controlled by all Bitcoin users around the world. While developers are improving the software, they can't force a change in the Bitcoin protocol because all users are free to choose what software and version they use. In order to stay compatible with each other, all users need to use software complying with the same rules. Bitcoin can only work correctly with a complete consensus among all users. Therefore, all users and developers have a strong incentive to protect this consensus.
From a user perspective, Bitcoin is nothing more than a mobile app or
computer program that provides a personal Bitcoin wallet and allows a
user to send and receive bitcoins with them. This is how Bitcoin works
for most users. Behind the scenes, the Bitcoin network is sharing a public ledger
called the "block chain". This ledger contains every transaction ever
processed, allowing a user's computer to verify the validity of each
transaction. The authenticity of each transaction is protected by
digital signatures corresponding to the sending addresses, allowing all
users to have full control over sending bitcoins from their own Bitcoin
addresses. In addition, anyone can process transactions using the
computing power of specialized hardware and earn a reward in bitcoins
for this service. This is often called "mining". To learn more about
Bitcoin, you can consult the dedicated page and the original paper.
Bitcoin is a consensus network that enables a new payment system and a completely digital money. It is the first decentralized peer-to-peer payment network that is powered by its users with no central authority or middlemen. From a user perspective, Bitcoin is pretty much like cash for the Internet. Bitcoin can also be seen as the most prominent triple entry bookkeeping system in existence.
