re: Joining the bitcoin parade

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please do

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Bitcoin is essentially just a large public ledger. We call it the "blockchain."

This ledger tracks all transactions. In essence, there really are no "bitcoins" per se, just entries in the ledger stating who has what.

Cryptography is used to ensure that only authorized people can modify the ledger. In other words, if the ledger says I have 5 bitcoins, then only I should be able to send those bitcoins to anyone else.

This is where the private key and public keys come into play.

Each public key (aka a bitcoin address) is actually a just the result of a mathematical function being performed on the private key. The math works such that it is a trivial task to go from private key to public key, however, it is EXTREMELY difficult, practically impossible to go from public key to private key. We're talking billions upon billions of years of non-stop computer power to crack a private key.

Bitcoins are sent to public keys by using the private key to "digitally sign" a message stating that x amount of bitcoins is sent to abc address.. But in order to send them, it requires knowledge of the private key.


Does that clear anything up?