what is bitcoin and how does it work

bitcoin to dollar  54,665.80

 What is bitcoin, how does blockchain technology work, how secure is it, and how to become one of the miners chasing the "golden bitcoin"? We will describe all this in detail and simply in our article.

1. What is blockchain and how does this technology work?

You have probably heard the term "blockchain" more than once if you were interested in the topic of cryptocurrencies. As well as the term "database" you are probably also familiar with and perceived much better. The blockchain is essentially a database. It stores information in blocks, with each block containing a specific set of data (hash) and a link to the previous block. If we translate this word from English, then it will turn out to be "blockchain" (from the words block and chain).

Let's imagine that all of the medicine suddenly became electronic, and blockchain technology was introduced into it. How will it work? A record of each visit to the doctor - will be represented by a data block. Five visits form the same information chain. In this case, only the attending physician who has the digital key and the patient who has the second fragment of the key can gain access to the medical history.

In much the same way, blockchain works in the cryptocurrency environment, acting as a system for storing data on digital payments. At the same time, the database is securely encrypted from prying eyes and is stored on the computers of cryptocurrency users, and not on a single central server. A reasonable question is brewing: is it possible to hack a blockchain system? It is theoretically possible, but logically unreasonable. Since the storage devices are not connected to a shared server, a hacker attack must be truly global and therefore never pay for itself. That is why all data is completely safe from intruders.

2. What is bitcoin and how it works: we explain it in a simple way

For the first time, blockchain technology was implemented as a component of a digital currency called bitcoin. This currency is used on the Internet to pay for purchases. But if in real life money has a regulator in the form of the Central Bank, then Bitcoin can be described as a "regulator for itself", acting as an independent payment system. The whole idea of ​​bitcoin lies precisely in the exchange of digital money without third-party control. Accordingly, any transactions in this system are performed as quickly as possible, since no one checks them.

Another key difference between bitcoin and bank money is that a bank can print as much money as it wants to pay off debts. In the case of bitcoin, such a number will not work. The number of digital coins is limited by the algorithm and amounts to 21 million bitcoins, so each user can only hold a certain amount of this currency when their mining is over. No one will be able to create more bitcoins for themselves.

But how does the Bitcoin system work without a third-party regulator, which ensures the reliability of the payment and allows the merchant to make sure that they are not being cheated? In the case of bitcoin, the guarantor of payment is a pair of digital keys (personal and public) and a bitcoin address. bitcoin to dollar  54,665.80

If the buyer needs to transfer money to the seller, he must set the direction of the transaction using the seller's public key and confirm the transaction with the private key. The seller, in turn, can at any time use the buyer's public key and check whether the buyer actually made the payment. No personal data is used in this case, and the transactions themselves remain anonymous.

To obtain the bitcoins themselves, special computing equipment is used today. Each of the users involved in the extraction of this "crypt" becomes part of a peer-to-peer network, and the currency itself is distributed among the participants in the process. The more computing power - the more digital coins can be mined or mined (from the English mining). Today, bitcoins can only be mined on specialized computers with ASIC processors, since this task requires very large computing power.

3. Is it possible to mine cryptocurrency on a regular PC?

Traditional PC owners can jump into digital gold mines any minute. Despite the fact that the power for efficient mining of bitcoin from a home PC is definitely not enough, it is quite possible to get an alternative cryptocurrency. Especially the one that appeared recently, but shows good growth prospects on the cryptocurrency exchange. Subsequently, you will be able to play on the rate of digital currencies and receive bitcoins by exchanging so-called altcoins ("alternative coins") for them. bitcoin to dollar  54,665.80

For the production of alternative cryptocurrencies, you will need serious power of the level of gaming PCs: in particular, your income as a whole depends on the computing power of a video card. For example, an overclocked version of Nvidia GTX 1070 can bring in about $ 1.5 per day, and if it is properly overclocked, the income can increase to $ 2 or $ 2.5. We have given as an example very averaged values. They will be different for each cryptocurrency. After determining the computing power of the selected video card (it is measured in hash rates), you can use a special calculator to accurately calculate your income: