Bitcoin is a form of digital currency, created and held electronically. No one controls it. Bitcoins aren’t printed, like dollars or euros – they’re produced by people, and increasingly businesses, running computers all around the world, using software that solves mathematical problems.
Why i should use Bitcoin?
Bitcoin enables to option to pay fast and secure and without beeing limited by your bank or payment provider. Keep in mind that often payment provider doesent like Freedom of Speech and anonymity and block these kind of services from there network.
Some Payment Provider for example do not allow to pay for anonymous services or block the usage of VPN or Tor. These limits are not existing with Bitcoin.
1. It’s decentralized
The bitcoin network isn’t controlled by one central authority. Every machine that mines bitcoin and processes transactions makes up a part of the network, and the machines work together.
2. It’s easy to set up
Conventional banks make you jump through hoops simply to open a bank account. A Bitcoin Wallet can be created within 1 minute, no papers needed.
3. It’s anonymous
Well, kind of. Users can hold multiple bitcoin addresses, and they aren’t linked to names, addresses, or other personally identifying information. However…
4. It’s completely transparent
…bitcoin stores details of every single transaction that ever happened in the network in a huge version of a general ledger, called the blockchain.
If you have a publicly used bitcoin address, anyone can tell how many bitcoins are stored at that address. They just don’t know that it’s yours.
There are measures that people can take to make their activities more opaque on the bitcoin network, though, such as not using the same bitcoin addresses consistently, and not transferring lots of bitcoin to a single address. You can also use so called Bitcoin Mixer services.
5. Transaction fees are small
Your bank may charge you a 10 Euro fee for transfers.
Bitcoin doesn’t. There is a so called mining fee but this is most not more then a few cents (depending on the size of your transaction)
6. It’s fast
You can send money anywhere and it will arrive minutes later, as soon as the bitcoin network processes the payment.
The Bitcoin.org info page gives a short overview what you need to know.
For a short overview how it works you should look here
Wallets
The first thing you need is a wallet. You can get the standard Bitcoin Core or other wallets from the offical bitcoin.org website.
Besides that you can use online wallets:
A overview you can find here and here
Keep in mind that online walllets are never under your full control so you should not store large sums there for a longer time online.
Always backup your wallet in case you use a local Bitcoin wallet!
There are also hardware wallets existing, for example:
Exchanger:
To load your wallet with coins you need to buy them.
We list some exchangers per group so you can easy find a fitting exchanger. A complete overview you can find here
Europe and US
BTC-E (also Russia and China)
South America:
How to use Bitcoin anonymously: