Frequently Asked Questions
Find answers to recurring questions and myths about Bitcoin.
Table of contents
- General
- What is Bitcoin?
- Who created Bitcoin?
- Who controls the Bitcoin network?
- How does Bitcoin work?
- Is Bitcoin really used by people?
- How does one acquire bitcoins?
- How difficult is it to make a Bitcoin payment?
- What are the advantages of Bitcoin?
- What are the disadvantages of Bitcoin?
- Why do people trust Bitcoin?
- Can I make money with Bitcoin?
- Is Bitcoin fully virtual and immaterial?
- Is Bitcoin anonymous?
- What happens when bitcoins are lost?
- Can Bitcoin scale to become a major payment network?
- Legal
- Is Bitcoin legal?
- Is Bitcoin useful for illegal activities?
- Can Bitcoin be regulated?
- What about Bitcoin and taxes?
- What about Bitcoin and consumer protection?
- Is Bitcoin gambling legal?
- Economy
- How are bitcoins created?
- Why do bitcoins have value?
- What determines bitcoin’s price?
- Can bitcoins become worthless?
- Is Bitcoin a bubble?
- Is Bitcoin a Ponzi scheme?
- Doesn't Bitcoin unfairly benefit early adopters?
- Won't the finite amount of bitcoins be a limitation?
- Won't Bitcoin fall in a deflationary spiral?
- Isn't speculation and volatility a problem for Bitcoin?
- What if someone bought up all the existing bitcoins?
- What if someone creates a better digital currency?
- Transactions
- Are transactions anonymous?
- Why do I have to wait 10 minutes?
- How much will the transaction fee be?
- What if I receive a bitcoin when my computer is powered off?
- What does "synchronizing" mean and why does it take so long?
- What does increasing the block size limit mean?
- Bitcoin Mining
- What is Bitcoin mining?
- How does Bitcoin mining work?
- How much bandwidth does Bitcoin mining take?
- Isn't Bitcoin mining a waste of energy?
- How does mining help secure Bitcoin?
- What do I need to start mining?
- Security
- Is Bitcoin secure?
- Hasn't Bitcoin been hacked in the past?
- Could users collude against Bitcoin?
- Is Bitcoin vulnerable to quantum computing?
- Help
