bitcoin wallet is a piece of software that you use to communicate with bitcoin
network and then you can tell the bitcoin network when you want to send and receive
transaction now the best way to understand a bitcoin wallet is by comparing it to email
once you've set up an email address you need some kind of software to allow you to send
a receive emails to that new address now this software maybe an app on your phone it may
be an app on your laptop or could even be an app online that you log into with email you
enter the username and the password for your email address and you enter that info the app
and that's how internet knows that its really you that wants to send and receive emails to
that address now of course you tell everybody the email address and you have to do that in
order for anyone to be able to send you a message but just because someone knows your email
address that dosen't allow them to send email from that address dose it if they could that
would be bad because then they could send emails pretending to be you and cause all kinds of
problems in order to be allowed to send email from a particular email address you have to know
the password and if someone finds out your email password then there's nothing stopping them
logging into your email app and then sending messages and this is very similar to how bitcoin
wallets work every bitcoin account has two elements to it one of them is called your public
address which is kind of like your email address and one of them is called your private key
which is like your password so just like email you can give anyone your bitcoin public address
and then anyone anywhere in the world can send you some bitcoin they don't need to know anything
else about you all they need to know is the public address and they can send the money to you
now your bitcoin private key on the hand is the one thing that you must protect it's called your
private key for a reason because you should never reveal this to anybody now if someone gets
your email password that's pretty bad because they can start sending emails from your address
but thats not quite as bad as someone getting your bitcoin private key because they can actually
then steal all your bitcoins by sending them somewhere else and just like email once a bitcoin
transaction had been send its a one-way trip the only way to get it back will be for that person
to send it back to you voluntarily so bitcoin literally works like digital cash one you're handed
over the bitcoin belongs to that other person and the same gose when you receive bitcoin if someone
sends it to you it's yours and no one can take it away from you the only way they could do that is
if they knew your private key and of course now you know never to give this or reveal it to anyone.
