We live in a
digital age where everything is digital be it shopping, be it marketing or
anything else for that matter. We live in an age where we have come a long way
to being an economy based on computerization. Well when everything is digital
why not currency. This is exactly what bitcoins are.
What are Bitcoins?
A Bitcoin is a
virtual or digital currency i.e. it is a currency that is electronically
generated, stored and shared. It was developed by developer Satoshi Nakamoto in
2009. It is an open source software i.e. a
software code that is made available by the copyright holder to other
people to freely edit, study and share. A bitcoin can be used to share currency
with anyone anywhere in the world. It has no relationship with a bank and does
not involve maintaining a bank account at all. It is completely independent of
any bank private or public. All you need is a mobile phone or a computer and a
bitcoin account in order to process transactions.
How does it work?
In order to
begin using bitcoin you need a bitcoin account or wallet. This provides you
with an address. It is very similar to an email address through which people
can send you money but unlike an email ID they cannot get any other information
on you through this address. This address looks very similar to a string of
random letters. This also allows you to send money to other bitcoin account
holders.
Have you seen
the Blackberry messenger barcode that you can just scan and add anyone to your
Blackberry messenger account? You can do the same here as well. This barcode
scan would provide you with the address to send the bitcoin.
Similar to
payment gateways like Paypal, Bitcoin also cuts a small amount as fee from
every transaction.
Litecoin: What is it and how is it different from Bitcoins?
Litecoin is also
an open source peer to peer software that was developed in 2011. It was
developed by Charles Lee. It’s like saying if Bitcoin is the gold then Litecoin
is the silver. Other than this Bitcoin and Litecoin have the following
differences:
1)
Processing time
The processing time for a transaction on Litecoin is only 5 minutes
while it is 10 minutes on Bitcoin.
2)
Transactions
Litecoin is also said to be an improved version of Bitcoin as it was
the motivation for the development. It is able to handle a larger volume of
transactions.
3)
Mining Process
The
mining process is also different in terms of Litecoin. The time for mining of
the blocks is set and can only be done at that particular time.
0 comments:
Post a Comment