Hello everybody, I will post a big training for beginners to understand bitcoin and practice trading on different platform.
Without talking so much , Let's going to the first part of courses :
Part I
Bitcoin Basics
The origin of bitcoin
The most important aspect of bitcoin may be the concept behind
it. Bitcoin was created by developer Satoshi Nakamoto. Rather
than trying to design a completely new payment method to overthrow
the way we all pay for things online, Satoshi saw certain
problems with existing payment systems and wanted to address
them.
The concept of bitcoin is rather simple to explain: During the
financial
crisis of 2008, people from all over the world felt its
debilitating economic effects. And at the time of this writing (early
2016), many are still feeling the effects in terms of the dwindling value of their fiat currency (the currency approved by a country’s
government).
As the global financial system teetered on the brink
of collapse, many central banks engaged in quantitative easing —
or in simple terms, turned on the printing presses. Central banks
flooded the markets with liquidity and slashed interest rates to
near zero in order to prevent a repeat of the Great Depression of
the 1930s. The effect of this was large‐scale fluctuations in fiat currencies
and what has since been termed currency wars — a race
to competitively devalue so that an economy can become more
viable simply by its goods and services being cheaper than those
of its neighbors and global competitors. The response of central
banks around the world was the same as it always has been when
these things happen: Governments had to bail out affected banks
and they printed extra money, which further devalued the existing
money supply.
In bailing out the banks, there was a net transfer of debt to the
public purse, thus adding to future taxpayer liabilities. This created
a sense of social injustice among some quarters. Aside from
that, no one really knows what the long‐term effects of quantitative
easing will be. Perhaps inflation at some point in the future
and a further devaluation of those fiat currencies who engaged
in the schemes? What seemed clear is that central bankers, supposedly
acting independent of governments, were taking many
economies
into the unknown and were prepared to devalue their
fiat currencies
at will just to keep the wheels turning. In doing
so, they bailed out the very same institutions and bankers whose
reckless behavior had brought about this crisis in the first place.
The only other option would have been to let the whole system
collapse and be purged, as for instance happened in Iceland. That
country defaulted on its debt and endured great economic turmoil
in the aftermath of that event.
Therein lies the genesis of bitcoin: a decentralized financial system
taken out of the hands of a few elite global decision‐makers.
Satoshi Nakamoto decided it was time for a new monetary system,
one so different from the current financial infrastructure that you
could even call it a disruptive force. Whether or not bitcoin was
ever intended to completely replace the financial infrastructure
remains unclear, but we do know that multiple banks are looking
at the technology that powers bitcoin, because they see its potential
and want to adopt this technological power for their own use.
They are free to do so, of course, as the core bitcoin technology —
known as a blockchain (much more on that in Chapter 7) — was
open source from day one for everyone to see. Creating bitcoin
as open source meant that anyone was allowed to come up with
their own improvements and build platforms on top of it.
Viewed from this angle, bitcoin could be said to have a driving
ideology.
It is about so much more than just using the associated
coin as a payment method. It is about using the underlying technology
and discovering its full potential over time. How you decide to
use that technology is completely up to you. It can be adapted to
fit nearly any financial need you can imagine. All you really need
to do is be open to the technology itself. Even though you may not
grasp the entire concept from the start, just keep an open mind.
Let’s face it: The intersection of finance and technology is plagued
with troubles. All of us have been affected by the banking crises
of the 21st century, and quite a few countries are still struggling
to recover from that financial fiasco. Bitcoin developer Satoshi
Nakamoto was a victim of this mismanagement by central banks
and thought long and hard to come up with a proposed solution.
The mainstream financial infrastructure is flawed, and a viable
alternative is more than welcome. Whether or not that alternative
will be bitcoin remains to be seen.
When Satoshi Nakamoto came up with the idea of bitcoin, one
key factor was destined to play a major role: decentralization.
Decentralization means we are all part of the bitcoin ecosystem,
and we all contribute to it in our own ways. Rather than relying on
a government, bank, or middleman, bitcoin belongs to everyone,
in a system called peer‐to‐peer, and we all make up the bitcoin
network. Without individual users, there is no bitcoin. The more
people embrace bitcoin, the better it works. Bitcoin needs an
ever‐expanding community who actively use bitcoin as a payment
method, either by buying goods and services with bitcoins or offering
goods and services in exchange for bitcoins.
Due to the digital currency’s free market spirit, anyone in the
world can set up their own business and accept bitcoin payments
in a matter of minutes. Plus, existing business owners can offer
bitcoin as an alternative payment method, with the potential to
expand their customer base on a global scale. It’s easy to do your
bit(coin) and get involved.
Getting technical
As you’d expect with a peer‐to‐peer payment system, the technology
powering bitcoin digital currency is a force to be reckoned
with. A lot of focus is being put on making bitcoin’s blockchain
technology a powerful tool in the financial sector. That’s only to
be expected, because most of the focus regarding bitcoin revolves
around the currency aspect.
Bitcoin’s technology offers unprecedented technological options
and abilities only dreamt of a few years ago. And a great deal of
potential remains hidden below the surface for the time being,
as some of the world’s brightest minds try to grasp the potential
implications of integrating bitcoin technology into our daily lives.
There is more discussion about this in Chapter 3.
Bitcoin technology has been underestimated in the past, and to be
honest, it has a bit of a checkered history. Several platforms have
been created in order to make bitcoin more accessible and usable,
but that has not always lead to a happy ending — especially when
it comes to security. New tools like bitcoin represent a learning
curve for everyone. Bitcoin is only slowly starting to mature in that
regard.
The potential of bitcoin technology has attracted many interested
parties from all aspects of life. The frontrunners are people in the
financial sector, who are intrigued by the open ledger aspect of
bitcoin technology. Open ledger means anyone in the world can
see every financial transaction on the network take place in real
time. Even though that idea might seem a bit scary, open ledger in
a system allowing us to track multiple things would be beneficial.
None of these implementations have to be related to finance per se,
but there are plenty of options worth exploring in that sector.
When it comes to accepting bitcoin payments, there’s a lot of room
left to explore. Although integrating a bitcoin payment option onto
your website just takes a few minutes, in‐store payments are a
slightly different manner. However, multiple payment processors
will gladly help you convert your bitcoin transactions to local currency.
To make that deal even better, you receive payments to
your bank account the very next business day, rather than waiting
up to a week for credit card payments to clear through the banking
network. And the fees for accepting bitcoin as a payment solution
are likely to be low as well.
Bitcoin as currency
Whenever we talk to people about bitcoin, one of the first things
they mention is the current bitcoin price. At the time of writing,
the price hovers around $300 per bitcoin.
Bitcoin had nearly no value until 2011 and only then started climbing
the charts slowly. However, in 2013 bitcoin saw a peak price of
well above $1,100, which some attributed to market manipulation
by a trading bot on the largest bitcoin exchange at that time.
The bitcoin price is determined by its users under the free market
principle of supply and demand. And although the bitcoin supply
is limited to 21 million “coins” in total — to be reached by 2140 —
no huge demand exists for this digital currency just yet. As bitcoin
matures further over the next few years, that story might change.
Why 21 million? Nobody knows. Some believe it’s because it’s a
mathematical equation that brings us to the amount of coins available
until the year 2140 with rewards being halved every four years.
Keep in mind that bitcoin is a payment method that can be used
online and in the real world as well. However, that does not make
bitcoin a currency, because it lacks certain aspects of the “ground
rules” that determine whether a payment method is a currency or
not. But according to most experts around the world, bitcoin is
to be considered a digital currency in its truest form. As we try to
wrap our hands around this new currency technology, who is to
say whether or not that term is correct? What we can say is that
bitcoin is a valid payment method for many goods and services,
and that is what makes its digital aspect so much fun to explore.
By being a decentralized payment method (meaning no government
or official entity controls it), bitcoin lets anyone in the world
accept a digital currency payment from anyone else in the world.
Bitcoin is the same digital currency across borders, no matter
what the country’s physical currency, and can be converted into
nearly any local currency on request. With no transaction fees
to speak of, and being able to receive your payments the next
business
day, what’s not to like? On top of that, mobile payments
are on the rise, so bitcoin is an excellent alternative mobile
payment method to take your customer base to the next level, at
very little cost.
