What are bitcoins?

What are bitcoins?

Bitcoins are the unit of currency of the Bitcoin system. A commonly used shorthand for this is “BTC” to refer to a price or amount (e.g. “100 BTC”). There are such things as physical bitcoins, but ultimately, a bitcoin is just a number associated with a Bitcoin Address. A physical bitcoin is simply an object, such as a coin, with the number carefully embedded inside. See also an easy intro to Bitcoin.

• GENERAL

• What is bitcoin?
• What are bitcoins?
• How can I get bitcoins?
• Does Bitcoin guarantee an influx of free money?
• Is Bitcoin a 'get-rich-quick' scheme?
• Will I make money by installing the client?
• As an investment, is Bitcoin a sure thing?
• Can I buy bitcoins with Paypal?
• Where can I find a forum to discuss Bitcoin?
• How are new bitcoins created?
• What's the current total number of bitcoins in existence?
• How divisible are bitcoins?
• What do I call the various denominations of bitcoin?
• How does the halving work when the number gets really small?
• How long will it take to generate all the coins?
• If no more coins are going to be generated, will more blocks be created?
• But if no more coins are generated, what happens when Bitcoins are lost? Won't that be a problem?
• If every transaction is broadcast via the network, does Bitcoin scale?

• ECONOMY

• Where does the value of Bitcoin stem from? What backs up Bitcoin?
• Is Bitcoin a bubble?
• Is Bitcoin a Ponzi scheme?
• Doesn't Bitcoin unfairly benefit early adopters?
• Won't loss of wallets and the finite amount of Bitcoins create excessive deflation, destroying Bitcoin?
• What if someone bought up all the existing Bitcoins?
• What if someone creates a new block chain, or a new digital currency that renders Bitcoin obsolete?
• Is Bitcoin open to value manipulation?

• SENDİNG AND RECEİVİNG PAYMENTS

• Why do I have to wait 10 minutes before I can spend money I received?
• Do you have to wait until my transactions are confirmed in order to buy or sell things with Bitcoin?
• I was sent some bitcoins and they haven't arrived yet! Where are they?
• I sent too small of a transaction fee, is my bitcoin lost forever?
• Why does my Bitcoin address keep changing?
• How much will the transaction fee be? Why is the fee so high?
• What happens when someone sends me a bitcoin but my computer is powered off?
• How long does "synchronizing" take when the Bitcoin client is first installed? What's it doing?

• NETWORKING

• Do I need to configure my firewall to run Bitcoin?
• How does the peer finding mechanism work?

• MINING

• What is mining?
• Is mining used for some useful computation?
• Is it not a waste of energy?
• Why don't we use calculations that are also useful for some other purpose?
• How can we stop miners from creating zero transaction blocks?
• How does the proof-of-work system help secure Bitcoin?
• Why was the "Generate coin" option of the client software removed?

• SECURITY

• Could miners collude to give themselves money or to fundamentally change the nature of Bitcoin?
• Could miners gang up and give themselves money?
• Can they do so in ways not sanctioned by Bitcoin network? Is there any way to rip off the network and make loads of money dishonestly?
• Could miners fundamentally change the nature of bitcoin?