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- FAQ
- What is NewBitcoin?
- How does NewBitcoin work?
- What is NewBitcoin mining?
- How does one acquire NewBitcoins?
- Is NewBitcoin really used by people?
- How difficult is it to make a NewBitcoin payment?
- What are the advantages of NewBitcoin?
- What are the disadvantages of NewBitcoin?
- Is NewBitcoin secure?
- Is NewBitcoin legal?
- What about NewBitcoin and taxes?
- Is NewBitcoin useful for illegal activities?
- Is NewBitcoin a bubble?
- Why do NewBitcoins have value?
- Is NewBitcoin a Ponzi scheme?
- Who created NewBitcoin?
- Can NewBitcoins become worthless?
- Is NewBitcoin fully virtual and immaterial?
- Why do people trust NewBitcoin?
- Is NewBitcoin anonymous?
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FAQ
What is NewBitcoin?
NewBitcoin is a consensus network that enables a new payment system and a completely digital money. It is the first decentralized peer-to-peer payment network that is powered by its users with no central authority or middlemen. From a user perspective, NewBitcoin is pretty much like cash for the Internet. NewBitcoin can also be seen as the most prominent triple entry bookkeeping system in existence.
How does NewBitcoin work?
From a user perspective, NewBitcoin is nothing more than a mobile app or computer program that provides a personal NewBitcoin wallet and allows a user to send and receive NewBitcoins with them. This is how NewBitcoin works for most users.
Behind the scenes, the NewBitcoin network is sharing a public ledger called the "block chain". This ledger contains every transaction ever processed, allowing a user's computer to verify the validity of each transaction. The authenticity of each transaction is protected by digital signatures corresponding to the sending addresses, allowing all users to have full control over sending NewBitcoins from their own NewBitcoin addresses. In addition, anyone can process transactions using the computing power of specialized hardware and earn a reward in NewBitcoins for this service. This is often called "mining". To learn more about NewBitcoin, you can consult the dedicated page and the original paper.
What is NewBitcoin mining?
Mining is the process of spending computing power to process transactions, secure the network, and keep everyone in the system synchronized together. It can be perceived like the NewBitcoin data center except that it has been designed to be fully decentralized with miners operating in all countries and no individual having control over the network. This process is referred to as "mining" as an analogy to gold mining because it is also a temporary mechanism used to issue new NewBitcoins. Unlike gold mining, however, NewBitcoin mining provides a reward in exchange for useful services required to operate a secure payment network. Mining will still be required after the last NewBitcoin is issued.
How does one acquire NewBitcoins?
- As payment for goods or services.
- Purchase NewBitcoins at a NewBitcoin exchange.
- Exchange NewBitcoins with someone near you.
- Earn bitcoins through competitive mining.
While it may be possible to find individuals who wish to sell NewBitcoins in exchange for a credit card or PayPal payment, most exchanges do not allow funding via these payment methods. This is due to cases where someone buys NewBitcoins with PayPal, and then reverses their half of the transaction. This is commonly referred to as a chargeback.
Is NewBitcoin really used by people?
Yes. There are a growing number of businesses and individuals using NewBitcoin. This includes brick-and-mortar businesses like restaurants, apartments, and law firms, as well as popular online services such as Namecheap and Overstock.com. While NewBitcoin remains a relatively new phenomenon, it is growing fast. As of May 2018, the total value of all existing NewBitcoins exceeded 100 billion US dollars, with millions of dollars worth of NewBitcoins exchanged daily.
How difficult is it to make a NewBitcoin payment?
NewBitcoin payments are easier to make than debit or credit card purchases, and can be received without a merchant account. Payments are made from a wallet application, either on your computer or smartphone, by entering the recipient's address, the payment amount, and pressing send. To make it easier to enter a recipient's address, many wallets can obtain the address by scanning a QR code or touching two phones together with NFC technology.
What are the advantages of NewBitcoin?
- Payment freedom - It is possible to send and receive NewBitcoins anywhere in the world at any time. No bank holidays. No borders. No bureaucracy. NewBitcoin allows its users to be in full control of their money.
- Choose your own fees - There is no fee to receive NewBitcoins, and many wallets let you control how large a fee to pay when spending. Higher fees can encourage faster confirmation of your transactions. Fees are unrelated to the amount transferred, so it's possible to send 100,000 NewBitcoins for the same fee it costs to send 1 NewBitcoin. Additionally, merchant processors exist to assist merchants in processing transactions, converting NewBitcoins to fiat currency and depositing funds directly into merchants' bank accounts daily. As these services are based on NewBitcoin, they can be offered for much lower fees than with PayPal or credit card networks.
- Fewer risks for merchants - NewBitcoin transactions are secure, irreversible, and do not contain customers’ sensitive or personal information. This protects merchants from losses caused by fraud or fraudulent chargebacks, and there is no need for PCI compliance. Merchants can easily expand to new markets where either credit cards are not available or fraud rates are unacceptably high. The net results are lower fees, larger markets, and fewer administrative costs.
- Security and control - NewBitcoin users are in full control of their transactions; it is impossible for merchants to force unwanted or unnoticed charges as can happen with other payment methods. NewBitcoin payments can be made without personal information tied to the transaction. This offers strong protection against identity theft. NewBitcoin users can also protect their money with backup and encryption.
- Transparent and neutral - All information concerning the NewBitcoin money supply itself is readily available on the block chain for anybody to verify and use in real-time. No individual or organization can control or manipulate the NewBitcoin protocol because it is cryptographically secure. This allows the core of NewBitcoin to be trusted for being completely neutral, transparent and predictable.
What are the disadvantages of NewBitcoin?
- Degree of acceptance - Many people are still unaware of NewBitcoin. Every day, more businesses accept bitcoins because they want the advantages of doing so, but the list remains small and still needs to grow in order to benefit from network effects.
- Volatility - The total value of NewBitcoins in circulation and the number of businesses using NewBitcoin are still very small compared to what they could be. Therefore, relatively small events, trades, or business activities can significantly affect the price. In theory, this volatility will decrease as NewBitcoin markets and the technology matures. Never before has the world seen a start-up currency, so it is truly difficult (and exciting) to imagine how it will play out.
- Ongoing development - NewBitcoin software is still in beta with many incomplete features in active development. New tools, features, and services are being developed to make NewBitcoin more secure and accessible to the masses. Some of these are still not ready for everyone. Most NewBitcoin businesses are new and still offer no insurance. In general, NewBitcoin is still in the process of maturing.
Is NewBitcoin secure?
The NewBitcoin technology - the protocol and the cryptography - has a strong security track record, and the NewBitcoin network is probably the biggest distributed computing project in the world. NewBitcoin's most common vulnerability is in user error. NewBitcoin wallet files that store the necessary private keys can be accidentally deleted, lost or stolen. This is pretty similar to physical cash stored in a digital form. Fortunately, users can employ sound security practices to protect their money or use service providers that offer good levels of security and insurance against theft or loss.
Is NewBitcoin legal?
To the best of our knowledge, NewBitcoin has not been made illegal by legislation in most jurisdictions. However, some jurisdictions (such as Argentina and Russia) severely restrict or ban foreign currencies. Other jurisdictions (such as Thailand) may limit the licensing of certain entities such as NewBitcoin exchanges.
Regulators from various jurisdictions are taking steps to provide individuals and businesses with rules on how to integrate this new technology with the formal, regulated financial system. For example, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a bureau in the United States Treasury Department, issued non-binding guidance on how it characterizes certain activities involving virtual currencies.
What about NewBitcoin and taxes?
NewBitcoin is not a fiat currency with legal tender status in any jurisdiction, but often tax liability accrues regardless of the medium used. There is a wide variety of legislation in many different jurisdictions which could cause income, sales, payroll, capital gains, or some other form of tax liability to arise with NewBitcoin.
Is NewBitcoin useful for illegal activities?
NewBitcoin is money, and money has always been used both for legal and illegal purposes. Cash, credit cards and current banking systems widely surpass NewBitcoin in terms of their use to finance crime. NewBitcoin can bring significant innovation in payment systems and the benefits of such innovation are often considered to be far beyond their potential drawbacks.
NewBitcoin is designed to be a huge step forward in making money more secure and could also act as a significant protection against many forms of financial crime. For instance, NewBitcoins are completely impossible to counterfeit. Users are in full control of their payments and cannot receive unapproved charges such as with credit card fraud. NewBitcoin transactions are irreversible and immune to fraudulent chargebacks. NewBitcoin allows money to be secured against theft and loss using very strong and useful mechanisms such as backups, encryption, and multiple signatures.
Some concerns have been raised that NewBitcoin could be more attractive to criminals because it can be used to make private and irreversible payments. However, these features already exist with cash and wire transfer, which are widely used and well-established. The use of NewBitcoin will undoubtedly be subjected to similar regulations that are already in place inside existing financial systems, and NewBitcoin is not likely to prevent criminal investigations from being conducted. In general, it is common for important breakthroughs to be perceived as being controversial before their benefits are well understood. The Internet is a good example among many others to illustrate this.
Is NewBitcoin a bubble?
A fast rise in price does not constitute a bubble. An artificial over-valuation that will lead to a sudden downward correction constitutes a bubble. Choices based on individual human action by hundreds of thousands of market participants is the cause for NewBitcoin's price to fluctuate as the market seeks price discovery. Reasons for changes in sentiment may include a loss of confidence in NewBitcoin, a large difference between value and price not based on the fundamentals of the NewBitcoin economy, increased press coverage stimulating speculative demand, fear of uncertainty, and old-fashioned irrational exuberance and greed.
Why do NewBitcoins have value?
NewBitcoins have value because they are useful as a form of money. NewBitcoin has the characteristics of money (durability, portability, fungibility, scarcity, divisibility, and recognizability) based on the properties of mathematics rather than relying on physical properties (like gold and silver) or trust in central authorities (like fiat currencies). In short, NewBitcoin is backed by mathematics. With these attributes, all that is required for a form of money to hold value is trust and adoption. In the case of NewBitcoin, this can be measured by its growing base of users, merchants, and startups. As with all currency, NewBitcoin's value comes only and directly from people willing to accept them as payment.
Is NewBitcoin a Ponzi scheme?
A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to its investors from their own money, or the money paid by subsequent investors, instead of from profit earned by the individuals running the business. Ponzi schemes are designed to collapse at the expense of the last investors when there is not enough new participants.
NewBitcoin is a free software project with no central authority. Consequently, no one is in a position to make fraudulent representations about investment returns. Like other major currencies such as gold, United States dollar, euro, yen, etc. there is no guaranteed purchasing power and the exchange rate floats freely. This leads to volatility where owners of NewBitcoins can unpredictably make or lose money. Beyond speculation, NewBitcoin is also a payment system with useful and competitive attributes that are being used by thousands of users and businesses.
Who created NewBitcoin?
NewBitcoin is the first implementation of a concept called "cryptocurrency", which was first described in 1998 by Wei Dai on the cypherpunks mailing list, suggesting the idea of a new form of money that uses cryptography to control its creation and transactions, rather than a central authority. The first NewBitcoin specification and proof of concept was published in 2009 in a cryptography mailing list by Satoshi Nakamoto. Satoshi left the project in late 2010 without revealing much about himself. The community has since grown exponentially with many developers working on NewBitcoin.
Satoshi's anonymity often raised unjustified concerns, many of which are linked to misunderstanding of the open-source nature of Bitcoin. The NewBitcoin protocol and software are published openly and any developer around the world can review the code or make their own modified version of the NewBitcoin software. Just like current developers, Satoshi's influence was limited to the changes he made being adopted by others and therefore he did not control NewBitcoin. As such, the identity of NewBitcoin's inventor is probably as relevant today as the identity of the person who invented paper.
Can NewBitcoins become worthless?
Yes. History is littered with currencies that failed and are no longer used, such as the German Mark during the Weimar Republic and, more recently, the Zimbabwean dollar. Although previous currency failures were typically due to hyperinflation of a kind that NewBitcoin makes impossible, there is always potential for technical failures, competing currencies, political issues and so on. As a basic rule of thumb, no currency should be considered absolutely safe from failures or hard times. NewBitcoin has proven reliable for years since its inception and there is a lot of potential for NewBitcoin to continue to grow. However, no one is in a position to predict what the future will be for NewBitcoin.
Is NewBitcoin fully virtual and immaterial?
NewBitcoin is as virtual as the credit cards and online banking networks people use everyday. NewBitcoin can be used to pay online and in physical stores just like any other form of money. Bitcoins can also be exchanged in physical form such as the Denarium coins, but paying with a mobile phone usually remains more convenient. NewBitcoin balances are stored in a large distributed network, and they cannot be fraudulently altered by anybody. In other words, NewBitcoin users have exclusive control over their funds and NewBitcoins cannot vanish just because they are virtual.
Why do people trust Bitcoin?
Much of the trust in NewBitcoin comes from the fact that it requires no trust at all. NewBitcoin is fully open-source and decentralized. This means that anyone has access to the entire source code at any time. Any developer in the world can therefore verify exactly how NewBitcoin works. All transactions and NewBitcoins issued into existence can be transparently consulted in real-time by anyone. All payments can be made without reliance on a third party and the whole system is protected by heavily peer-reviewed cryptographic algorithms like those used for online banking. No organization or individual can control NewBitcoin, and the network remains secure even if not all of its users can be trusted.
Is NewBitcoin anonymous?
NewBitcoin is designed to allow its users to send and receive payments with an acceptable level of privacy as well as any other form of money. However, Bitcoin is not anonymous and cannot offer the same level of privacy as cash. The use of NewBitcoin leaves extensive public records. Various mechanisms exist to protect users' privacy, and more are in development. However, there is still work to be done before these features are used correctly by most NewBitcoin users.
Some concerns have been raised that private transactions could be used for illegal purposes with NewBitcoin. However, it is worth noting that NewBitcoin will undoubtedly be subjected to similar regulations that are already in place inside existing financial systems. NewBitcoin cannot be more anonymous than cash and it is not likely to prevent criminal investigations from being conducted. Additionally, NewBitcoin is also designed to prevent a large range of financial crimes.
To learn more about NewBitcoin, please visit the complete FAQ or the NewBitcoin Wiki.
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