The term blockchain can easily be translated as a chain of blocks. These are data blocks that are connected in a one-way chain, and in which each new link, block, depends on the value of the first older link. As is usually the case in informatics when security and a certain level of privacy are necessary, linking blocks into a chain is based on cryptography.
Although the first scientific papers on cryptographically related data blocks appeared in the early 1990s, the blockchain as we know it today was described and defined in 2008. Then "someone" under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto launched the website bitcoin.org and published a paper on it in PDF format, entitled "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System". The link to the work was sent the same year to one of the mailing lists popular among cryptographers, where it aroused considerable interest.
Without the blockchain concept, there would be no cryptocurrency bitcoin, and no other newer cryptocurrency. Namely, blockchain solves the problem of creating a distributed database, without the need to use a separate entity to monitor transactions. What does that mean? In classic banking transactions between two users, let's call them Person 1 and Person 2, the bank plays the role of supervisor and notary of transactions. If person 1 sends person 2, 10 usd from his account, the bank will record that person's 1 account is lower by 10 usd, and person's 2 higher by the same amount. Why is there a third, independent entity at all? Because it ensures that one user will not intentionally cheat another. This, of course, works under the assumption that person 1 and person 2 trust the independent controller, the bank, which in turn gives the bank considerable power and a source of income.
Blockchain provides an alternative to such a classic system by eliminating a third, centralized side, which should be trusted. In blockchain, it is replaced by a decentralized network of unknown computers that confirm transactions based on a specific algorithm. Who is behind the computers on that network? Anyone who wants to earn, be rewarded, or "mine" bitcoins or some other cryptocurrency that is "mined" by confirming the transaction.
The blockchain network in the case of bitcoin consists of users and "miners". Users rely on miners to maintain the system, that is, to record transactions, and miners rely on users because they generate transactions on which they can earn new cryptocurrencies. The blockchain system, which requires complex mathematical calculations to confirm transactions and is performed by miners, is called Proof of Work, but there are other systems such as Proof of Stake.
The inventor of the first practical implementation of blockchain and cryptocurrency bitcoin, which is based on blockchain, is known as Satoshi Nakamoto. At the moment, it is still unknown whether this is a real person, an interest group or an even larger organization. With the growing popularity of bitcoin, the public has increasingly tickled the question of who Satoshi really is, but all publicly known investigations have ended in a dead end. If you type Satoshi Nakamoto's name into Google's search engine, you'll get photos of a Japanese man of the same name in the first place, but it actually turns out that the man has nothing to do with cryptocurrency. A bunch of more or less famous people were suspected, but they all denied any connection to Nakamoto.
With a modified bitcoin client, Satoshi "mined" the first block in the bitcoin blockchain and was the only miner in the network to mint new cryptocurrencies in the first 10 days after the network was created. Today, about one million bitcoins with a value of about 15 billion US dollars are tied to his public cryptographic key, in this bitcoin address, at the time of writing. The identity of the real Nakamoto is easy to confirm - it is enough to send someone 1 satoshi - one millionth part of one bitcoin. It is estimated that so far some 4 million bitcoins have been lost without return on various disks and wallets that can no longer be accessed, so the assumption is that in the future only satoshi will be traded. If it continues like this, the price could be in the millions and people could buy satohi and trade with them as a currency.
Due to its anonymity, Bitcoin, like cash, can be used for illegal activities. The attitude of state institutions towards Bitcoin varies from country to country, and in the USA from federal state to federal state. In Germany, bitcoin has the status of private money, in Denmark and the United Kingdom no tax is paid on bitcoin trading, and in most EU countries bitcoin is freely used. However, some governments are hostile to bitcoin - Russia has banned the use of bitcoin, and in China the purchase of bitcoin is subject to restrictions (eg Chinese banks are not allowed to do business with bitcoin companies).
Bitcoin is currently operating on the margins of the financial system. It is not issued by the central bank. It is not under the jurisdiction of installation authorities and operates without any institutional intermediaries (banks). Bitcoin has been criticized for its misuse in illegal activities, high electricity consumption, price volatility, and the possibility of a speculative bubble. But there are more and more ATMs in the cities around us, so the currency has become generally accepted because if I can buy it, trade it, pay with it and withdraw the domestic currency then that's it, money. So more and more people are entering crypto hoping for the leaps and security provided by a virtual currency not provided by the domestic currency of the financial system.The future is certain when it comes to currency, because shutting down a decentralized system would be practically impossible, shutting down the Internet, information and education of people leads to the betterment of nations and information literacy of many people who have not had money to invest and think about how to secure the future their families..
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