Bitcoin_101: What is bitcoin? Read on my blog: https:/…

steffenkd ·

Bitcoin_101: What is bitcoin?

Read on my blog:
https://steffenkd.de/articles/bitcoin/what_is_bitcoin/

Read onchain:
https://ordinals.gorillapool.io/content/ea00a6beb0baa211bf8bd858359980d83ee5b4a54f8185302493cd74493da33a

Read here on treechat wihtout pictures though:

author: steffenkd
date: 04.06.2026
wordcount: ~ 4700
reading time: ~ 36 minutes
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What is Bitcoin?
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TLDR/Summary:
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Bitcoin is a peer to peer electronic cash system.
It is a decentralized system design, where users and server operators (miners) can create accounts and identities themselves by creating a pair of asynchronous keys with [public-key-cryptography](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-key_cryptography).
Users then can transact and trade freely peer-to-peer without intermediaries, middlemen or gatekeepers over the internet or in real life.
They can also delegate read, write and execution access to their data and content without centralized positions of potential corruption like google, meta, governments, insurances or banks.
Every transaction, interaction or timestamp on the network costs a small fee which is being payed to the server operators (miners).
There are several server operators (miners) which are all operating and managing their own version of the same database.
The server operators (miners) are constantly auditing each other so cheating becomes close to impossible.
The history of the database has the same state for all server operators and can't be changed retroactively.
If you play by the rules you are being rewarded, if you try to cheat you are being punished.
What is bitcoin?
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"What is Bitcoin?" is similar to asking "what is water?", where several definitions can be equally true.
In my opinion the understanding of a topic improves and gets better, the more definitions you have.
Water i.e. can be described as wet when you have human sensormotorics, as H2O when you are familiar with chemistry, as formless because it takes any shape it is being filled into, as liquid because it can't be carried (except for ants), as rare if you are living in the desert, or as plentiful, when living at a river or the ocean.
When triangulating a location it is similar - the more measuring points you have, the better your localization accuracy.
With bitcoin it is similar.
Therefore I will give you several definitions, analogies and explanations about what bitcoin may be and you can make of it whatever you want.
Hopefully a clearer picture will emerge.
The more explanations and definitions you read, the clearer the picture in your mind (the graph) gets and the better the overall understanding.
Be aware that you should always do your own research and that I may be wrong!
![geometrical_shapes_2d_vs_3d_pov](/home/lucidebris/ipara/0-vaults/bsv_blogposts_3dordi/images/what_is_bitcoin/understanding_through_perspectives.svg)
Depending on your point of view and the angle you are looking from, the picture can change and can get more clearly. The more points of view you have, the clearer your overall picture.
Go to the original source
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I highly recommend to always go to the original source, where the definition was initially forged.
In this case you should read [The Bitcoin Whitepaper](https://steffenkd.de/articles/bitcoin/bitcoin_whitepaper/).
You can either interact peer-to-peer with the original source or you introduce a middleman, normally an influencer on social media or an artificial-intelligence, which will always distort the original picture or concept to some degree.
This distortion can happen either intentionally or by accident.
The end result is the same - a distorted picture and understanding of the original content.
Ironically the "peer-to-peer interaction" is one of the main themes in bitcoin, but most people investing and talking about it, haven't read the bitcoin whitepaper and therefore haven't interacted peer-to-peer with the original source and information - the irony.
Another problem is, that when you have heard about bitcoin from a middleman first, you may already have a distorted picture in your mind.
Which may affect the reading of the whitepaper and further research, since you will already be biased even if you are not aware.
Therefore always try to go to the original source as soon as possible and make up your own mind.
You can learn about other peoples opinions and all the different nuances and orientations afterwards.
In our attention driven world you should take great care where you get your information from.
That all being said, I recommend you do pause and read [The Bitcoin Whitepaper](https://steffenkd.de/articles/bitcoin/bitcoin_whitepaper/) first.
![original_source](/home/lucidebris/ipara/0-vaults/bsv_blogposts_3dordi/images/what_is_bitcoin/information_distortion_middlemen.svg)
What the inventor had to say
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Bitcoin was described by a pseudonymous entity named Satoshi Nakamoto in the bitcoin whitepape…