What is BTC / Bitcoin
Bitcoin is digital money. Physically, this currency does not exist, there are only special registers where records are kept of who has how many bitcoins and who transfers them somewhere. These registers are called blockchains.
This is similar to cashless payments with banks: If you pay with a credit card in a shop, you do not hand physical money over to anyone. Your operation is simply fixed and prescribed somewhere in the bank register.
Bitcoins differ from the traditional currency in that registrations are not stored centrally in banks and payment systems, but simultaneously on all computers that work with Bitcoins. Everyone can see all operations with all bitcoins in history.
The registers are protected by cryptography. Manipulating the registry entries in all copies is impossible. It is impossible to rewrite the data in blocks and say that someone now has millions. Bitcoin is quite protected in this sense.
Can the Bitcoin Lightning Network help the currency?
The idea of the Lightning Network appeared in 2015, it is simply the second level of protocols built on the blockchain network with which you can process transactions almost instantly. To use the Bitcoin Lightning Network, transaction participants must first install a multi-signature crypto currency wallet. Once the wallet address is stored in the Bitcoin blockchain, the parties can make transactions through the Lightning payment channel.
Upon completion of each transaction, the parties sign an updated account balance indicating how many bitcoins each party should have. If a dispute arises, you can settle the transaction by returning to the latest version of the balance sheet. Since the transactions are conducted by two parties, there is no need to reach a consensus on the network. There is also no need for the miners to work, which should guarantee almost immediate transactions. After the parties have made a transaction, the Bitcoin Lightning channel is closed and the final balance is determined in the blockchain.
Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?
Satoshi Nakamoto is a pseudonym for a person or group of people who developed the protocol of the bitcoin crypto currency and created the first version of the software. Several attempts have been made to reveal the real person or group behind this name, but none of them has been successful.
On October 31, 2008 Nakamoto published the article "A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System" on a mailing list about cryptogrfy (The Cryptography Mailing List) of metzdowd.com. He describes the bitcoin crypto currency as a completely decentralized system of electronic money that does not require the trust of third parties. In spring 2009 he released the first version of the Bitcoin Wallet and launched the Bitcoin network.
In his profile on the P2P Foundation website, Satoshi said he is 37 years old and lives in Japan. There is a view that this data is not true: Satoshi writes in English as in his native language, and the Bitcoin software is not localized for the Japanese language and is also not documented in the Japanese language. Satoshi Nakamoto has not been involved in the Bitcoin project since mid-2010.
Why do I need the bitcoin crypto currency?
The crypto currency allows you to transfer money under a pseudonym and without the participation of banks. This is relevant for transactions with persons and companies from countries outside the EU.
With the Bitcoin crypto currency you can pay for an air ticket from "Airbaltic", buy computers from "Dell". You can even donate money to a Buddhist temple in Seoul.
The Bitcoin crypto currency is traded on the stock exchange (the Cboe commodity exchange in Chicago). This allows investors to invest money in the crypto currency through the futures contracts.
Since 2015, the bitcoin crypto currency has risen from 200-300 dollars to 20000 dollars and is currently trading around 10000 dollars. This makes the crypto currency interesting for investments and speculations.