Most say it's Internet-money, but it's much more than that. To understand it, it's best to watch all the video's of this teacher: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0oDDIy0P2s He has 27 video's already, for if you are really intrigued: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgo7FCCPuylVk4luP3JAgVw/videos
Are you f-ing serious? There is an entire forum devoted to bitcoin now and Baron even created an overview thread. Research is not your strong suit, eh? http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?threadid=279308
Its basically like virtual currency just like you see in farmville or world of warcraft except it can be spent wherever someone is willing to take it. The difference though is that bitcoin can't be counterfeited or duplicated as there is a crytpographic code in every bitcoin that can be verified in the blockchain.
i think the OP Question is more deep. anyone can wiki it and figure out what bitcoin is.. but really. .what the hell is it? complex algorthims. mining.. .what I have not seen much about is. who benefits from the solving of these complex puzzles? are they some crosswords or some high school kids math problems. or the genome code or string theory. how come all the computing power being used? where??? is it used to keep facebook running? many years back there was a screen saver which was SETI. search for extra terristiral life or something and if u downloaded it .,it would benefit mankind.. it all smells of BS.. then they keep harping that bitcoin has no transaction fees. .i get that part. but for most of my transactions. I never pay a fee. for example when I personally pay someone I use cash or check. Credit cards. i like them for the no annual fee and all the bonus rewards I get...
OK, I will try to answer your two questions (although you can find these answers in the video-links I posted already: so actually you aren't willing to spend some time to learn, but instead calls it BS and ask others to do this work for you instead.....think about that...) 1) The huge computing is needed to make it 100% sure that a Bitcoin spend, is not copied or counterfeited (which otherwise would be very easy for a piece of digital-code). Some of your cash dollars in your wallet are counterfeited, but none Bitcoins are (which makes Bitcoins more useful). If you want to know how these computer-algorithms manage this YOU need to study some more...(it has to do with "proof-of-work" and Byzantine Generals) 2) The nearly free transaction fee, might be on first sight not important to you, but it is, as the 3% fee charged by CreditCard companies to merchants, is passed to you the consumer! (Even if you pay cash it has some costs to merchants). Our current 50 years old financial processing system (banks, processors, creditcards, international-transports (like WesterUnion), accountancy) has huge overhead costs: streamlining this towards an Internet-age with a new fast, secure, and costless payment-protocol is everything except BS.
hoi presentation really great here is mine: heavily marketed alternative to creditcards where price is manipulated to attract masses. same feeling when replacing real food with GM one.
Thanks... but: Heavily marketed? I haven't seen any advertising (TV, newspapers, etc), other than some posts by enthusiast individuals on forums to explain things. This in contrast to the professional advertising-budgets of bitcoin's competitors. I actually feeling the same, when replacing post (you know: letters in envelops with stamps) with email
you may be right. just too lazy to check it out, until mass participation is big enough to be able to trade my system. remind me when capitalization is >1T