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Ribhav
Ribhav

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Bitcoin for Non-Technical People: Why the First Cryptocurrency Matters

#webdev #web3 #community #blockchain

This is Day 3 of my 60‑day “learning Web3 in public” series as a non‑developer with a technical writing and community background.

Quick note: I took Sunday off, so I’m picking up the series again today. For me, the point is building a consistent learning habit, not hitting all 60 days in a perfect, uninterrupted streak.

Day 1 was about why I’m doing this and where I want to go (DevRel/community in Web3).

Day 2 broke down blockchain in plain English for non‑technical people.

Today is about the first big use case of that technology: Bitcoin — what it actually is, why it was created, and why people still care about it. A beginner‑friendly explainer that helped me here was “What is Bitcoin? Beginner’s Guide 2025” by Blockpit – https://www.blockpit.io/en-us/blog/what-is-bitcoin.

What is Bitcoin, in plain English?

Let’s strip away the noise.

Bitcoin is:

  • A form of digital money.
  • That isn’t issued by a bank or government.
  • That runs on a public network of computers instead of one company’s servers.
  • That anyone can use, as long as they follow the rules of the system.

If you want a one‑line version:

Bitcoin is internet‑native money that runs on a public blockchain instead of inside a bank’s private database.

At a basic level, Bitcoin lets you:

  • Send value from one person to another over the internet.
  • Without needing a bank, payment app, or company in the middle to approve it.
  • With the rules of the system enforced by software, not by a single institution.

The official “How does Bitcoin work?” page on Bitcoin.org has a simple breakdown of users, network, and blockchain if you want a visual mental model – https://bitcoin.org/en/how-it-works.

Why was Bitcoin created in the first place?

The origin story matters a lot here.

Bitcoin’s whitepaper was published in 2008, just after the global financial crisis. Banks were being bailed out, people were losing trust in financial institutions, and there was a real question: “What does it mean to trust money that can be created, frozen, or reversed by others?”

The author, under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, proposed a new kind of system:

  • Purely peer‑to‑peer electronic cash.
  • No “trusted third party” like a bank in the middle.
  • Transactions verified by the network itself, using cryptography and consensus instead of trust in a CEO or central bank.

In other words, Bitcoin was designed as:

  • A response to over‑reliance on centralized financial institutions.
  • An experiment: “Can we have money that doesn’t belong to any state or company?”

You don’t have to agree with that mission, but understanding it explains why people are passionate about Bitcoin.

How Bitcoin roughly works (without equations)

You don’t need the deep technical details, but you should understand the flow at a high level. A step‑by‑step “for dummies” style guide that pairs well with this section is “Bitcoin For Beginners (Updated 2025): Guide For Dummies” – https://cryptopotato.com/bitcoin-for-beginners/.

  1. Users hold Bitcoin in wallets

    • A “wallet” is just software (or hardware) that holds your private keys.
    • Your wallet gives you addresses you can share to receive funds (like email addresses for money).

  2. Transactions are created and broadcast

    • You decide to send Bitcoin to someone.
    • Your wallet creates a transaction: “I’m sending X BTC from my address to this other address.”
    • It’s broadcast to the network — many nodes around the world.

  3. Nodes check transactions

    • Nodes are computers running Bitcoin software.
    • They check: “Is this transaction valid? Does this person actually have the Bitcoin they’re trying to spend?”
    • Invalid transactions are rejected.

  4. Miners bundle transactions into blocks

    • Miners are specialized nodes that compete to add the next block of transactions to the blockchain.
    • They do this by solving a computational puzzle (Proof of Work).
    • The first miner to solve it gets to add the block and is rewarded with newly issued Bitcoin plus transaction fees.

  5. The blockchain is updated

    • Once a block is added, nodes update their copy of the blockchain.
    • This blockchain is the public history of all Bitcoin transactions ever made.
    • Changing history would mean rewriting this chain on many machines simultaneously, which is extremely hard.

You don’t need to memorize each step, just remember:

  • The network, not a bank, checks and records transactions.
  • Miners secure the system and are rewarded for it.
  • The blockchain is the shared record of who owns what.

Why is there a fixed supply (21 million)?

One of the things people talk about often is Bitcoin’s “hard cap.”

Bitcoin’s rules say:

  • There will never be more than 21 million Bitcoin.
  • New Bitcoin is created as a reward to miners and released on a schedule that halves roughly every four years (“halving”).
  • Over time, the amount of new Bitcoin entering circulation keeps decreasing.

Why does this matter?

  • In many countries, the local currency can be printed in large quantities by central banks, which can reduce its purchasing power over time.
  • Bitcoin’s supply is predetermined and transparent, so some people see it as “digital gold” — a digital asset with predictable scarcity.

This doesn’t mean Bitcoin is guaranteed to go up. It just explains why some people treat it as:

  • A long‑term store of value.
  • A hedge against certain types of monetary policies.

How miners are “selected” (without math headaches)

In my previous article, we talked about blocks and miners in a simple way. Let’s zoom in a bit.

In Bitcoin, no one personally picks a miner. Miners basically enter a giant lottery that runs every ~10 minutes.

  • Every miner builds a candidate block: a list of valid, waiting transactions plus some extra data.
  • They keep trying different random numbers (nonces) in that block.
  • Each try goes through a hash function; the result must be below a certain target number set by the network.
  • The first miner whose block hash is low enough “wins” the lottery and gets to add their block to the blockchain, earning the block reward plus all transaction fees in that block.

So miners are “selected” by chance, but the more computing power a miner has, the more lottery tickets they effectively hold.

The important part: you don’t need to understand the exact math. You just need to know that it’s a fair race that’s hard to cheat and easy for everyone else to verify.

What “problems” are miners solving?

Contrary to how it’s sometimes described, miners are not solving useful math problems like equations for science.

The puzzle is very specific:

  • “Find a number so that when we hash this block’s data plus that number, the result looks rare enough (is below a certain target).”

Key properties:

  • It’s very hard to find a valid answer (you have to try lots of random guesses).
  • It’s very easy for everyone else to check the answer once you show it.
  • This “wasted effort” is intentional; it makes it extremely expensive to cheat or rewrite history.

In simple terms: miners burn electricity and computing power to prove they followed the rules, and the network rewards them for that honesty.

How does a miner see and pick my transaction?

This confused me for a long time: “If a miner doesn’t know me, how does my transaction reach them, and why do they bother including it?”

When you press “send” in your wallet app, you aren’t sending directly to a miner. You’re sending to the Bitcoin network.

Rough flow:

  1. Your wallet creates and signs a transaction: “I’m sending X BTC from my address to this other address.”
  2. It broadcasts that transaction to one Bitcoin node (a server running Bitcoin software).
  3. That node checks if it’s valid and relays it to other nodes in the peer‑to‑peer network.
  4. Valid, unconfirmed transactions are stored by nodes in a waiting area called the mempool.
  5. Miners also run full nodes, so their mempools fill up with the same list of waiting transactions.

So miners don’t need to know you personally; they just see your transaction as one of many valid transactions sitting in the mempool.

Why include yours at all?

  • Each transaction includes a fee.
  • When a miner builds a block, they:
    • Look at transactions in their mempool.
    • Prioritize those with higher fees per byte.
    • Pack as many as they can into the block.

If your transaction:

  • Is valid, and
  • Pays a competitive fee,

then some miner will include it simply because it increases their total reward when they win the block.

They’re not “doing you a favor”; they’re running a business.

“Couldn’t AI just do this better than miners?”

This is a natural question when you hear “math puzzle” and “computers.”

Short answer: for Bitcoin’s design, AI doesn’t replace miners, because the job isn’t “being smart,” it’s “doing massive numbers of dumb, random guesses,” and AI doesn’t shortcut that.

  • Bitcoin’s Proof of Work puzzle is intentionally designed as a brute‑force, random guessing game.
  • Each guess is independent and unpredictable, so what matters is how many guesses you can make per second (hash rate), not how clever your algorithm is.
  • AI can help miners optimize around the edges (tuning hardware, energy use, when to run machines), but it doesn’t magically skip the underlying work.

There are research ideas for new blockchains that use “Proof of Useful Work” or “Proof of Useful Intelligence,” where the work secures the network and also does AI/ML tasks, but those are different systems, not Bitcoin.

What people actually use Bitcoin for

Different people use Bitcoin for different reasons. Some real‑world examples:

  • Long‑term store of value

    • People in relatively stable economies might buy and hold Bitcoin for years as a speculative investment or hedge.

  • Protection in unstable economies

    • In countries with high inflation or capital controls, some people use Bitcoin to move value across borders or preserve purchasing power.

  • Censorship‑resistant payments

    • Because the network doesn’t belong to a single company, it can be harder to block specific transactions (even though exchanges and banks are still regulated).

  • Learning and experimentation

    • Developers, hobbyists, and educators use Bitcoin as a starting point to understand blockchain, cryptography, and decentralized systems.

Of course, Bitcoin is also used for speculation, and sometimes for things you might not approve of — like any powerful tool.

Where I personally got stuck (and how I got unstuck)

My biggest confusion with Bitcoin at first:

  • Did I need to believe “Bitcoin will replace all money” to take it seriously?
  • Why were some people treating it like a religion and others calling it a scam?

Reading beginner‑friendly guides and watching a few videos helped me reset my expectations. The ones that clicked most for me were:

Those helped me see that:

  • Bitcoin is an experiment in building money outside traditional systems.
  • It has clear tradeoffs: energy use, volatility, complexity, UX.
  • It’s not “perfect money,” but it’s also not just a meme.

My mindset now is:

  • Understand what problem it tries to solve.
  • See where it works well and where it clearly doesn’t.
  • Stay honest about risks instead of blindly hyping it.

You can adopt the same stance: curious, but skeptical in a healthy way.

Why non-technical people should care about Bitcoin

You don’t need to trade Bitcoin or become a “maxi” to benefit from understanding it.

Here’s why it’s worth your time:

  • It’s the first large‑scale example of decentralized money.
  • It shaped how people think about blockchain, Web3, and digital ownership.
  • Many Web3 ideas (DeFi, NFTs, DAOs, on‑chain communities) evolved after and around Bitcoin.
  • Governments, banks, and companies now react to Bitcoin’s existence, even if they dislike it.

If you want to work in Web3 content, DevRel, or community, you’ll meet three types of people:

  • People who love Bitcoin.
  • People who hate Bitcoin.
  • People who are confused by Bitcoin.

Being able to explain what it actually is — calmly and clearly — is a superpower.

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