Introducing Bitcoin : Getting Technical

As you’d expect with a peer‐to‐peer payment system, the technology powering bitcoin digital currency is a force to be reckoned with. A lot of focus is being put on making bitcoin’s blockchain technology a powerful tool in the financial sector. That’s only to be expected because most of the focus regarding bitcoin revolves around the currency aspect.

Bitcoin’s technology offers unprecedented technological options and abilities only dreamt of a few years ago. And a great deal of potential remains hidden below the surface for the time being, as some of the world’s brightest minds try to grasp the potential implications of integrating bitcoin technology into our daily lives. There is more discussion about this in Chapter 3.

Bitcoin technology has been underestimated in the past, and to be honest, it has a bit of a checkered history. Several platforms have been created in order to make bitcoin more accessible and usable, but that has not always lead to a happy ending — especially when it comes to security. New tools like bitcoin represent a learning curve for everyone. Bitcoin is only slowly starting to mature in that regard.

The potential of bitcoin technology has attracted many interested parties from all aspects of life. The frontrunners are people in the financial sector, who are intrigued by the open ledger aspect of bitcoin technology. Open ledger means anyone in the world can see every financial transaction on the network take place in real-time. Even though that idea might seem a bit scary, the open ledger in a system allowing us to track multiple things would be beneficial. None of these implementations have to be related to finance per se, but there are plenty of options worth exploring in that sector.

When it comes to accepting bitcoin payments, there’s a lot of room left to explore. Although integrating a bitcoin payment option onto your website just takes a few minutes, in‐store payments are a slightly different manner. However, multiple payment processors will gladly help you convert your bitcoin transactions to local currency. To make that deal even better, you receive payments to your bank account the very next business day, rather than waiting up to a week for credit card payments to clear through the banking network. And the fees for accepting bitcoin as a payment solution are likely to below as well.

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