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> "you can't point to a particular bitcoin and say that's my bitcoin" Doesn't every Bitcoin have a serial number, similar to the car's license plate?
by asimpletune 11y ago
> "you can't point to a particular bitcoin and say that's my bitcoin"
Doesn't every Bitcoin have a serial number, similar to the car's license plate?
- rwallace 11y agoI'm no expert on bitcoin, but as I understand it, the answer is not really: bitcoin works by numbers, but they are not equivalent to the serial numbers on dollar bills, more like rough equivalents of bank account numbers, login passwords and balances.
- otoburb 11y agoNo. Every transaction has a corresponding hash (similar to a car's license plate number), but bitcoins themselves are consolidated into inputs and resultant outputs. The chain of ownership is established through the transactions recorded in the ledger[1]. Here's an example 10BTC transaction assuming no intermediate fees: A(2) + B(8) ==> X(5) + Y(5) You can't tell how many of A's bitcoins were sent to X or Y, but you can trace the transactions all the way to the originally mined blocks that each contained 50BTC. [1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transaction https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transaction
- simonebrunozzi 11y agoTo an extent, bitcoins don't exist at all. Wallets exist, and balances in those wallets exist.
- asimpletune 11y agoThanks for that explanation