Double flower in bitcoin world
There are only 21 million bitcoins
"graphics card mining" is a joke. In fact, it is running a specific algorithm to generate bitcoin through a large number of calculations
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extended materials:
the concept of bitcoin was first proposed by Nakamoto in 2009. According to Nakamoto's idea, the open source software was designed and released, and the P2P network on it was constructed. Bitcoin is a kind of P2P digital currency. Point to point transmission means a decentralized payment system
unlike most currencies, bitcoin does not rely on specific currency institutions. It is generated by a large number of calculations based on specific algorithms. Bitcoin economy uses the distributed database composed of many nodes in the whole P2P network to confirm and record all transactions, and uses the design of cryptography to ensure the security of all aspects of currency circulation. The decentralized nature and algorithm of P2P can ensure that it is impossible to artificially manipulate the value of bitcoin through mass proction. The design based on cryptography can make bitcoin only be transferred or paid by the real owner. This also ensures the anonymity of money ownership and circulation transactions. The biggest difference between bitcoin and other virtual currencies is that the total amount of bitcoin is very limited and it has a strong scarcity. The monetary system used to have no more than 10.5 million in four years, after which the total number will be permanently limited to 21 million
bitcoin can be cashed and converted into the currency of most countries. Users can use bitcoin to buy some virtual items, such as clothes, hats and equipment in online games. As long as someone accepts it, they can also use bitcoin to buy real-life items
on February 26, 2014, Joe Manchin, a Democratic senator from West Virginia, issued an open letter to a number of regulatory authorities of the US federal government, hoping that the relevant authorities would pay attention to the status quo of bitcoin's encouraging illegal activities and disrupting the financial order, and demanded that actions be taken as soon as possible to completely ban the electronic currency
from 12:00 noon on January 24, 2017, China's three major bitcoin platforms officially began to collect transaction fees
it's not impossible that you can dig 100 in a day. To be exact, it doesn't take a day. It only takes less than a few seconds to win. The premise is that you can win "Tianhe No.2" which ranks first in the world.
the birth of bitcoin
the birth of bitcoin should be on November 1, 2008. A man with the pseudonym of "Nakamoto Tsung" published a paper on the Internet. In this paper, he described in detail a new monetary system, which he named "bitcoin"
then, on January 3 of the next year, the first bitcoin program was born in the hands of Nakamoto Tsung, along with the first 50 bitcoins from mining. After that, he began to fade out until he disappeared completely
so far, people have not found out the real identity of this person, even if today's operators, Internet giants and the government have firmly grasped people's behavior on the Internet
he often switches between American and British English when he speaks. He goes online at different times of the day at random to hide his nationality and time zone; He hides his IP address, encrypts his email, and deliberately forges some writing and speaking styles to confuse the public; Besides, he is also an expert in cryptography. By the way, the place where he published his paper is called & quot; Cryptography mailing list & quot
so bitcoin was born with a hacker spirit: against the censorship imposed by any force
of course, we can also see that if a hacker who invented the anonymous currency system can't be anonymous, the whole thing will become a joke< But fortunately, Nakamoto didn't let us down
1. What is currency
I find that I can't run this section in any case to clarify what is bitcoin. I am not an expert in the field of economics. I can only talk about this issue in a very superficial and intuitive sense However, as far as the theme expressed in the title is concerned, it seems to be enough)
it has been mentioned in senior high school textbooks (remember?), Money is the medium to store value. If a thing wants to become money, it must meet the following requirements:
1) scarcity
that's why gold can be used and sand can't be used as money. Scarcity can be understood as the difficulty of obtaining it. The more scarce it is, the more difficult it is to obtain it. An intuitive understanding is as follows: assuming that your monthly salary is 5000 yuan, it means that the scarcity of RMB is just such a degree, that is, you have to pay a month's labor to get 5000 yuan. You won't agree to pay your salary with 5000 grains of sand, because instead of working for a month to get it, you can easily get it by walking around the beach
how does the current financial system guarantee the scarcity of money? Control distribution. The issue of money is firmly in the hands of the central bank, so that the amount of money can be controlled (so you now know that it is illegal to print money without permission). Back to the example just now, you agree to pay you a month's salary with 5000 yuan because the circulation of RMB has just reached this level. If the circulation of RMB doubles and the scarcity decreases, you should ask for 10000 yuan to pay your salary (but the response of the market is often not so fast. During this period, your wealth is actually deprived - your labor should have received 10000 yuan, but only 5000 yuan in return)
2) transactional
of course, the purpose of currency is to trade. As many people tell you, money is spent, not brought into the coffin. So in addition to meeting scarcity, the more convenient it is for a thing to trade, the more it meets the standard of ideal currency. Therefore, in the history of currency, silver dollar has replaced shells, paper money has replaced silver dollar, and digital currency is graally replacing paper money
the "transaction" here refers to the transfer of property from one party to the other, that is, the decrease of one party's property and the corresponding increase of the other party. For physical currency, it happens very naturally. A wants to give 100 yuan to B. when the 100 yuan note is transferred from a's hand to B's hand, the transaction is completed. A's property is reced by 100 yuan and B's property is increased by 100 yuan. There is no third party involved in this process, which is completely a private act between a and B; However, when the transaction takes place at the level of digital currency, it is not so simple. Party A has to give 100 yuan to Party B. how can we ensure that the transaction is completed? Suppose that a and B record their wealth on their respective computers, how can we ensure that when B adds 100 yuan to them, a actually subtracts 100 yuan from them? Now we have to bring in a third party - the guy we call the bank. When a wants to transfer 100 yuan to B, he doesn't directly give it to B, but to the bank, "please transfer my 100 yuan to B", so the bank dected 100 yuan from a's account and added 100 yuan to B's account Let's assume that it generously does not charge any transaction fee)
the above is a rough model of modern monetary system. The biggest disadvantage of this model is that people have to trust a central system
the transaction of digital currency must rely on the bank, and a person's bank account number may be censored, restricted or even deprived. When one party wants to transfer his wealth to the other party, the bank can charge a high fee or refuse directly (for example, you try to remit a sum of money to a relative in the United States)
the issuance of money must rely on the central bank. Well, it's a well-known secret: the currency has been devaluing, or over issuing (think of the $100 20 years ago and the $100 now). I quote two paragraphs, one of which is Keynes's saying, "through a continuous process of inflation, the government can confiscate a part of citizens' wealth secretly and unknowingly. In this way, we can deprive the people of their wealth at will, while making the majority poor, we can make the minority rich, Another paragraph, from Hayek, "the government can not restrain the impulse to issue money indiscriminately."
is it possible to design a monetary system in which we do not need a central institution and are not forced to trust any third party, so as to make the issuance of currency transparent and controllable, and the transaction of currency private and secure
guess what
2. What is bitcoin
so we can now answer that bitcoin is an e-money system with decentralized distribution and transaction. In this system, the circulation of money is transparent and predictable, and the transaction of money uses the cooperation of the whole network to ensure the security of the transaction
next, I will graally dismantle the principle of bitcoin. It should be noted that bitcoin, as a proct already in use, has a lot of details. The purpose of this article is to explain the basic principles of bitcoin to readers without technical background, so these details will not be covered. For example, the address of the wallet is not the public key, but the second hash value of the public key; The difficulty requirement of blockchain is not to hash all the contents of blockchain once; wait. But for the sake of brevity, without affecting the explanation of the basic principles, these are simplified. I hope you can understand them
2.0. Bitcoin network is composed of many nodes running bitcoin programs
bitcoin is a network composed of many equal nodes
a node is a bitcoin program. Any machine that can connect to the Internet and have certain computing power can run this program - so your home computer can also be used as a node in the bitcoin network:)
nodes can communicate with each other. At the same time, bitcoin has a set of mechanism that allows a node to send messages to all other nodes, This behavior is called "broadcasting."
2.1. Blockchain - a public account book
let's go back to the example of banks. The most basic function of a bank is to maintain an account book, which only needs to record every transaction truthfully. For example, Wang Xiaoming transferred 30 yuan to Zhang Damao on X, year X; On y, y, y, y, Zhang Da Mao transferred 12 yuan to Li Xiao Dou, and so on. According to this account book, we can find all the transaction records of a person, so we can calculate the current account balance of the person. For example, since Li Xiaodou started to build a bank account, the total amount of transactions transferred in is 500 yuan, and the total amount of transactions transferred out is 300 yuan. Then it can be calculated that the balance of Li Xiaodou's account must be 200 yuan at this time
maintain this account book, and as the only maintainer (only the bank has the right to view and modify), the bank's responsibility as a trading center is completed
bitcoin also has an account book, but unlike banks, this account book is open and anyone can view and review it
this account book is called & quot; Blockchain & quot;. You can think of blockchain as a pamphlet. Every page of the pamphlet is full of transaction information, and new pages are constantly added<
2.2 Wallet - an account composed of a pair of public keys and private keys
the above section explains what a bitcoin account book is. This section will explain the ownership of funds in this account book, that is, the account system of bitcoin
there are essential differences between accounts in bitcoin and bank accounts
under a bank account, the bank records the identity information of the owner of the account (think back to the information you submitted when you went to the bank to open an account: photo, ID card, telephone number, home address...), so as long as you can prove your identity to the bank, you will get the ownership of the property under your name. In this model, the bank plays the role of an omniscient God: he knows the wealth information of real people. We have no choice but to pray to God not to let our information out or use it for evil
in the world of bitcoin, there is no such institution as bank, which will not force people to reveal their identities in exchange for the security of funds. Bitcoin's account is simply composed of two strings of numbers, which are called "public key" and "private key" respectively, and there is nothing else
the mathematical characteristics of these two numbers - a data encrypted by a private key can only be decrypted by a public key, so-called asymmetric encryption - enable them to perfectly implement the functions required by an account (called a wallet in the bitcoin world)
we take the public key as the account address - also known as the wallet address in the bitcoin world - which is similar to the account number in the banking system, that is, when you tell someone "please call 300 yuan for my account number", you need to tell them. For the bank, it is "China Merchants Bank 6214850200251100", compared with the special currency, it is "
the private key is the * only * certificate to prove the ownership of the wallet. You can hold it by proving that you are the private key of the wallet