Simply put, Bitcoin is the currency of the future. “BTC” is the abbreviation of this currency. However, unlike traditional currencies such as the dollar, euro and Turkish lira, there is no central bank, institution or government that controls it.
After the 2008 crisis, a person or people named Satoshi Nakamato published their technical articles on Bitcoin, an end-to-end electronic payment system. Thus, Bitcoin emerged as a decentralized, tamper-proof cryptocurrency. It came into use as a public network in 2009. Afterwards, Bitcoin was dubbed the "1st generation blockchain" as the first successful cryptocurrency.
Thanks to its distributed structure, it started to rise against today's financial order in a very short time. While it is possible to track the transactions entering the Bitcoin network, it is impossible to find out who the transaction is. Transactions confirmed in the Bitcoin Blockchain network are irreversible due to the chain structure and these transactions cannot be changed.
Since it cannot be regulated or controlled, the value of Bitcoin has risen from zero to thousands of dollars. After the rise of Bitcoin, many other cryptocurrencies have emerged. These currencies are called "alternative coins", in other words "alt coins". While creating alternative cryptocurrencies, competitive advantage has been taken advantage of by having different features at various points and new market types have emerged. The maximum amount of money that can be produced, algorithm, blockchain subtypes (private/shared, permissioned/unauthorized consensus) can be given as examples of these differences.
The maximum amount of Bitcoin that can be produced on the Bitcoin blockchain platform is 21 million. Bitcoin provides end-to-end, address-to-address transfer, and the block generation time is about 10 minutes.
Bitcoin addresses are users' identities on the platform. They cannot be associated with the person who made the transaction and no rights can be claimed on the addresses when the keys of these addresses are lost.
There are many advantages as well as various risks of using Bitcoin. Low risk of inflation and collapse, being simple, reliable and untraceable* (anonymous) are among its main advantages. The fact that money transfers are safer, cheaper and faster compared to traditional methods is an important advantage of Bitcoin. You can access your Bitcoins worth millions of lira from anywhere you can access your wallet. There is no way to carry such high amounts of money with cash or any other method so easily. The fact that the transactions made and your account balance are not known or controlled by any person/persons, government or bank also provides some advantages.
Although it is an advantage in some cases, there are cases where it is a disadvantage. It causes the illegal trade of products to be used for payments and used for money laundering. The low number of experts on this technology, the risk of losing, and the narrowness of the platforms on which to spend are among the other disadvantages of the system.
Bitcoin is not affiliated with any government or central bank. As with traditional coins, there is no precious metal such as gold in return. It is not a physically printed currency value. Bitcoin is a system that is produced completely virtual and has a mathematical formula on its basis. This mathematical formula is open to everyone and anyone who wants can join this system. Every individual involved in the Bitcoin miner system strengthens the security of the system.
It is a necessary system to ensure the production of Bitcoin and to establish the continuity and security of the blockchain system.
Since the beginning, mining with many different devices has led to the emergence of innovations that will bring more profit in this field due to the increasing competitive environment.
Mining is basically adding new blocks to the system by decrypting cryptography ciphers. Decryption of passwords depends on the processor capacity of the computer and the length of the password. Miners are rewarded with Bitcoin through blocks created by decrypting them.
The increase in the number of miners and the system allowing the production of a block in only 10 minutes has put mining in a difficult position to be profitable. In addition, although the limited number of Bitcoins is a factor that negatively affects mining, it prevents the formation of inflation in the Bitcoin currency.
Thanks to Bitcoin being tied to a certain protocol, every transaction you make is encrypted from start to finish. All transactions on the encrypted chain are recorded. Apart from user errors such as losing your wallet information or hacking your computer, the system has no security flaws.
Thanks to the system that prevents the Bitcoin value from being sold twice, a fraudulent or uninformed sending is not allowed.
The fact that there is no specific center and that all transactions must be approved by different computers makes the Bitcoin system secure.
Bitcoin price only changes according to the supply-demand relationship because the number of Bitcoins in circulation is limited.
The supply-demand balance is when the buyer and seller mutually decide on the price of a particular product. The factor that determines the price of Bitcoin starts here, when people start to buy Bitcoin - due to the limited amount of Bitcoin in circulation - its value begins to increase, and when they start to sell, its value begins to decrease.
How to Accept Payment with Bitcoin?
The easiest way to accept payments with Bitcoin is to transfer from person to person, that is, from address to address. This method can be implemented through some smartphone apps.
However, there are also commercial applications designed for just this purpose. These applications are based on QR code scanning.
Cryptocurrencies produced as an alternative to Bitcoin.
• Competition is fierce as Bitcoin is the 1st generation cryptocurrency, but altcoins are less popular than Bitcoin.
• Alternative coins usually use the SHA-256 algorithm or Scrypt algorithm used in Bitcoin. Apart from this, there are also altcoins with different algorithms such as X11, X13, X15, NIST5.
• The first altcoin is Namecoin.
It was created in order to confirm transactions faster than Bitcoin, to develop the crypto money world, to activate the digital money market, that is, to increase the circulation volume.
The gold of the digital currencies is Bitcoin, the silver is Litecoin and the oil is Ethereum.
Litecoin:
The transfer process is performed faster than Bitcoin.
Ripple:
Ripple is both a payment network and a cryptocurrency. Each trade takes 4 seconds. It takes more than 2 minutes in Ethereum, over an hour in Bitcoin, and days in traditional transactions. Also, 1500 transactions per minute can be processed on Ripple.
Ethereum:
It is a platform that allows developers to create smart contracts. It is the crypto currency with the highest market volume after Bitcoin. Donations and requests for ICOs, i.e. for coins that collect pre-demand before they are put on the stock market, are mostly received with Ethereum.
In its simplest form, Ethereum is a distributed platform based on blockchain technology. Its founder is Vitalik Buterin. Donations and requests for ICOs, i.e. for coins that collect pre-demand before they are put on the stock market, are mostly received with Ethereum.
Ethereum, like Bitcoin, is a distributed blockchain platform. The main difference between the two is the capabilities of the users and their intended use.
• Bitcoin; It is distributed, anonymous and transparent. The most important feature of Ethereum is its smart contract system.
• While the block generation period is 10 minutes on the Bitcoin platform, a block is produced every 15 seconds on Ethereum. So the transaction verification process is faster on the Ethereum platform.
• While Bitcoin mining depends on your processor power, in Ethereum mining, balance is achieved between the producers thanks to the system called GPU instead of ASIC and CPU.
Smart contracts are files containing scripts. That's why Ethereum is also called programmable money. It allows a certain action to take place automatically when conditions are met.
• If the person to whom you transfer Bitcoin knows you and knows your Bitcoin address, the transfer can be traced between the transfer recipients.
