Mastering Bitcoin [0] is also a good book. Though, it's for developers, the first few chapters anyone can read
What Is Bitcoin? A Step-By-Step Guide for Beginners
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Re: What Is Bitcoin? A Step-By-Step Guide for Beginners
#12The first link in the "Where do I go from here?" section at the end, leads to a parked domain bicoin.org apparently taken by domain squatters.
Yeah, I feel so confident about the rest of the links now.
Re: What Is Bitcoin? A Step-By-Step Guide for Beginners
#13I still don't understand what happens after all the bitcoins have been mined. It seems to be designed to just fail eventually and be replaced, which I cannot reconcile against the elegance of the rest of the design. To clarify: bitcoins can go away forever. About 6 years ago and had a wallet with a couple bitcoins in it. I have lost the key to that bitcoin wallet and if I can't find it, and noone else can find it, th…
Bitcoins can be split and divided up to 8 decimal points. You can own 0.00000001 BTC.
Additionally, the software could be forked to allow division of BTC to a more granular amount than 0.00000001, meaning if all but 1 BTC were lost the entire world could still transact with that last singular BTC by dividing it up into smaller units.
Re: What Is Bitcoin? A Step-By-Step Guide for Beginners
#14The block reward is 12.5 BTC now, it is not 25 BTC any more. Also Cryptsy ended up failing and is no longer functional. This article is outdated.
Re: What Is Bitcoin? A Step-By-Step Guide for Beginners
#15I still don't understand what happens after all the bitcoins have been mined. It seems to be designed to just fail eventually and be replaced, which I cannot reconcile against the elegance of the rest of the design. To clarify: bitcoins can go away forever. About 6 years ago and had a wallet with a couple bitcoins in it. I have lost the key to that bitcoin wallet and if I can't find it, and noone else can find it, th…
I don't think lost bitcoins are a big issue at the moment. I doubt all of them will get lost either. What happens when all are coins are minted isn't a big issue right now either.
The big things that are in our face right now is block size, total blockchain size and control of core development. I think the latter is the biggest issue facing bitcoin today.
Re: What Is Bitcoin? A Step-By-Step Guide for Beginners
#16I still don't understand what happens after all the bitcoins have been mined. It seems to be designed to just fail eventually and be replaced, which I cannot reconcile against the elegance of the rest of the design. To clarify: bitcoins can go away forever. About 6 years ago and had a wallet with a couple bitcoins in it. I have lost the key to that bitcoin wallet and if I can't find it, and noone else can find it, th…
Somebody already answered but for those pondering similar questions: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Help:FAQ (this one is also answered there)
Re: What Is Bitcoin? A Step-By-Step Guide for Beginners
#17I still don't understand what happens after all the bitcoins have been mined. It seems to be designed to just fail eventually and be replaced, which I cannot reconcile against the elegance of the rest of the design. To clarify: bitcoins can go away forever. About 6 years ago and had a wallet with a couple bitcoins in it. I have lost the key to that bitcoin wallet and if I can't find it, and noone else can find it, th…
Currently miners get new Bitcoin plus a fee from all the transaction in the mined block. Once all Bitcoin is created, miners will still get the transaction fees. As Bitcoin becomes more popular, the transaction fees alone should be enough to incentives miners.
And it is okay of coins are lost forever. If there are fewer Bitcoin available the price goes up. Simple supply and demand. Theoretically Bitcoin can be divided as small as needed to accommodate raising prices.
Re: What Is Bitcoin? A Step-By-Step Guide for Beginners
#18I am always wondering about Bitcoin and taxes. How does that work? And is it even taxable?
People in the Bitcoin community have a number of weird beliefs with regards to how taxation works generally, then apply these beliefs to Bitcoin, and arrive at results which are internally consistent but not indicative of the world we live in.
The US taxation system is based on taxes on self-reported income. Individuals/businesses are responsible for reporting their income accurately and honestly. Some forms of income are also reported on informational returns, which makes tax evasion regarding them more difficult. Bitcoiners appear to believe that "Bitcoin doesn't structurally generate informational returns so jackpot, no taxes ever" but there are any number of things which don't generate informational returns. You're still responsible for paying taxes; the government's main remedy if you don't is still auditing a very small percentage of returns and coming down hard on people who abusively underreported income.
Re: What Is Bitcoin? A Step-By-Step Guide for Beginners
#19I still don't understand what happens after all the bitcoins have been mined. It seems to be designed to just fail eventually and be replaced, which I cannot reconcile against the elegance of the rest of the design. To clarify: bitcoins can go away forever. About 6 years ago and had a wallet with a couple bitcoins in it. I have lost the key to that bitcoin wallet and if I can't find it, and noone else can find it, th…
The currency units are divisible, currently to 8 decimal places. If that becomes insufficient, more decimal places would presumably be added. Currently, if you take being able to count to a precision of the equivalent of 1 US cent, the BTC price would either have to go up 1000-fold or every 999 out of 1000 BTC issued would need to be lost for that to become necessary. Assuming I got my math right.
Re: What Is Bitcoin? A Step-By-Step Guide for Beginners
#20I still don't understand what happens after all the bitcoins have been mined. It seems to be designed to just fail eventually and be replaced, which I cannot reconcile against the elegance of the rest of the design. To clarify: bitcoins can go away forever. About 6 years ago and had a wallet with a couple bitcoins in it. I have lost the key to that bitcoin wallet and if I can't find it, and noone else can find it, th…
I guess that wasn't factored in.
OTOH the designer was enamoured of a deflationary currency so perhaps he liked the idea of not only a cap but a slowly dwindling supply.