Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency: You’ve probably heard of them, but what do they mean?
We’ve summarised a brief history of Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency to help answer your questions.
We’re all pretty familiar with how to make a payment. You select the good that you want to buy, hand over the money or pay by card for the price that the product is valued at, and you walk away having made a purchase. Well, when it comes to cryptocurrency, this basic process is the same.
The main difference is that cryptocurrency is a digital asset, used as an alternative to traditional money, to make an exchange. However, unlike banks and traditional digital currency, cryptocurrencies are controlled by a decentralized network of users. This means that it isn’t subject to national governments or central banking authorities. Cryptocurrency works through distributed ledger technology such as a blockchain, which will serve as a public financial transaction database.
What is BitCoin?
Bitcoin is the most common type of cryptocurrency. It is widely considered to be the first decentralized cryptocurrency, emerging in 2009. Since then, there have been over 6000 variants of it realised.
Just like normal money, Bitcoin has a relative value. Whole Bitcoins can be split into smaller units. The smallest unit is a satoshi and this can’t be broken into smaller units.
BitCoin is extremely versatile and can be used to make purchases, exchanged to settle debts and it can also be swapped for other currencies.
How do you purchase with Bitcoin?
First things first, you must open a Bitcoin wallet and then buy some Bitcoin. These can be bought from Bitcoin merchants or via an exchange.
To make a payment via Bitcoin, that webshop must accept BitCoin payments. If so, simply choose, the ‘pay with Bitcoin’ option at checkout. Congratulations, you’ve now successfully paid with cryptocurrency.