Читать книгу Cryptocurrency All-in-One For Dummies онлайн

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6 The bank gets a little cut for the trouble of being the middleman.

Now if you wanted to remove the bank from this entire process, who else would you trust to keep all these records without altering them or cheating in any way? Your best friend? Your dog walker? In fact, you may not trust any single person. But how about trusting everyone in the network?

Here’s what happens if you want to buy this book using a cryptocurrency:

1 You give your crypto details to the cashier.

2 The shop asks everyone in the network to see whether you have enough coins to buy the book.

3 All the record holders in the network check their records to see whether you do. (These record holders are called nodes, and are explained later in this chapter.)

4 If you do have enough, each node gives the thumbs-up to the cashier.

5 The nodes all update their records to show the transfer.

6 At random, a node gets a reward for the work.

That means no organization is keeping track of where your coins are or investigating fraud. In fact, cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin wouldn’t exist without a whole network of bookkeepers (nodes) and a little thing known as cryptography. The following sections explain that and some other important terms related to the workings of cryptocurrencies.