by George Fendenbourgh

Let us  think of bitcoins as a digital commodity, like digital gold. They can be bought and sold, traded and taxed, divided or combined, or squirreled away for a later date. If one day someone discovered a previously unknown precious metal that could somehow be sent over the Internet, that’s bitcoin.

But Bitcoin is also the network of its users, who together build and distribute a collaborative record of who owns which bitcoins. No bank, no country no single person is in control, complex mathematics ensure that no one needs to be in control, and more than $5 billion is currently accounted for within the system.