Trying to explain bitcoin to parents
I'm not a mining expert but i'll try something very simple.
Ask them about how money came from, it's printed from the central bank.
The value of the paper in their hand rely on TRUST, a collective agreement, whereas the intrinsic value is only what the paper and the printing cost.
When the money is stored in a bank it will be converted into account, which will need database in the central bank to store the data.
Bitcoin has no centralize authority, rely mostly on the distributed computing, which are small people like you around the globe.
Instead of printing the bills, it prints digital signature in form of digital coins.
Without a centralize computing, it's your job to 'print' those bills which you are getting some compensation for the work.
Just like how a central bank pays the cost of printing the money + the cost of running the servers and everyone that it employs.
Ask them this : If a central bank decided to make money printing for everyone, would they do it?
They will ask how some digits can have any value. Well the same as people trusting the value of a dollar bills or the record in your bank (digital money).
If everybody suddenly lost trust in the currency it will loose it's value.
Same as bitcoins, it can gain or loose value overtime, just like any other currency.
They don't value bitcoin, because they don't have any trust in it.
Is like someone offering them to exchange some money from uganda for us dollars, would they do it?
They still don't get it? Lets talk about trading money, Talk about FOREX.
You wanna start into forex, you gotta put some money in the table, that later you can decide which currency you want to buy.
Do you hold the currencies while your trading? NO, you hold the data, X amount of Euro, X amount of Pounds etc. All just numbers. Digital numbers.
In bitcoin, you buy the token, the entry for the whole trading, with real money, which then you can cash it out based on the value.
Each token are unique. Only the owner has the key to access those token.
Loose the key / wallet, loose the money (tell them about how a man lost 200m forgotten the password).
But what happens if everyone stops the server? All the coins gone?
Well the same as if ever someone nuke the central bank servers, or all your money got burned, it will be gone.
But is impossible to nuke all of the bitcoins servers, as they are spreads all over the world in a small basement like yours.
BUT WHYYY? why would anyone hold a made up money?
I go on further, but if there's any question they want to ask, i will try my best to answer that question with my limited knowledge.
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