How can I get some bitcoin and why would I want it?

If you want bitcoin you can have someone give it to you, get compensated in it, or buy some from places like Coinbase (if you're in the United States). You will need a bitcoin wallet in order to receive it. Wallets are free and come in many different varieties. 

Once you have a wallet, you have the ability to generate publicly shareable codes (called 'addresses' or 'public keys') which are capable of having bitcoin balances transferred to and from them. They look like this: 19NxKiMszNyheQ1sv5Nv54iwzrZJUXX37C. Don't send any to this address unless you want to send us money in bitcoin for some reason.

If you want somebody to give you bitcoin, send them your public key and have them send bitcoin from an address of theirs which has bitcoin to your address. This is all done using the bitcoin wallet application. These addresses also have corresponding private codes that you do not want to share. The private codes are like a private password that means you own the public address and are needed within the wallet to be able to send money from the address.

So why would you want to have or use bitcoin? There are a lot of reasons people want it. The reasons can become technical and political, which we can discuss in another post, but the main reason to want or use it is because it is the most efficient form of cash transfer in existence today in the world. We have the innovation of block chain technology to thank.

For a definitive resource on all beginner questions about Bitcoin, check out CoinDesk's Beginner's Guide.


Edit: added CoinDesk beginner guide paragraph at end.

Talking about the block chain

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