So there's a coin that's currently worth hundreds of us dollars but
not made of gold or platinum or any precious metal.
In fact it's not the kind of coin you can hold in your hand or stick in a picking bank it's a digital currency which means that only exists.
I'm talking about bit called the coin doesn't work like most money it isn't
attached to a state or government so it doesn't have a central issue in authority or regulatory but basically
that means there's no organization decided wind to make more big
chains figuring out how many to produce keeping
of where they are or investigating from so how does it coin work as a currency or have any.
Now you had all well big coin wouldn't exist without a whole network of people and a little thing
Cryptography in fact it sometimes described as the world's first crypto currency and here's how it works.
In a worldwide peer to peer network the whole point of most peer to peer networks is sharing stuff like letting people make copies of super legal music or movies.
The download if that coined as a digital currency what's stopping you for making a bunch of counterfeit copies and becoming fabulously wealth well.
Take an empty three or a video file a bit coins isn't a string of data that can be duplicated a big one is actually an entry on a huge global ledger called the block chain for reasons will get to in a minute the block change records every bit
in transaction that has ever happened and as a
but when and sixteen the complete ledger is about one hundred seven gigabytes of data so when you send someone big coins it's not what you're sending them a bunch of files
instead you're basically writing the exchange down on that big ledge or something like michael sends hanke five bad coins now maybe you're thinking that way
he said that big coined doesn't have a central authority to keep track of everything even though the block change is essential record there's no official group of people who update the leisure and keep track of every day
his money look at bank does it's decentralized in fact
anybody can volunteer to keep the block shame up to date with all the new transactions and a ton of people do it all works because there are lots of people keeping track of the same
the thing to make sure all transactions or accurate like imagine you're playing a game of poker with some powers but none of you have pro grips and you left your cash that whole there's no money on the table so a few of you
the that's of notebooks and start writing down who bets how much who winds and who
as you don't completely trust anyone else so everyone keeps their ledgers separately
at the end of every hand you all compared what you've read that way
if someone makes a mistake were tries to cheat and snags some extra money for themselves that discrepancy is god after a couple of hand you might
full of a page of you notebook with notes about the money movement you can think of each page as a block of transactions eventually you book will have pages and pages of
the a chain of those blog sense blocking now thousands of people are separately maintaining the big when block chain how we're all the
soldiers kept in sync to stick with our poker analogy think of the entire bit compute up your network
as a really huge pogue table with millions of people
some are just exchanging money but lots of volunteers or keeping