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If you’ve tuned into financial news recently chances are good that you’ve heard something about currency wars or economic turmoil. On the other hand Bitcoin has begun to get a lot of coverage from groups like and as it continues to outperform traditional curencies. But what exactly is Bitcoin and how do you use it? Well I’ve put together a brief overview of the digital currency. What follows is a bit of background on Bitcoin followed by a tutorial on setting up a Bitcoin wallet and getting your first Millibit.

An Overview Of Bitcoin

Bitcoin (abbreviated BTC) is a decentralized person to person digital currency that uses basic encryption to record and process transactions. Unlike traditional fiat currencies it is not reliant on a central entity like the US Dollar is on the Federal Reserve or the Euro is on the ECB. Rather, Bitcoin is reliant on a network of users running the Bitcoin client and on a group of miners. Miners use a combination of specialized software and hardware to process transactions and help keep the network running and secure. It is currently trading at about .50 (USD) to one Bitcoin and is expected to rise given its limited supply and increasing utility.

Bitcoin was developed by an anonymous individual referred to as Satoshi Nakamoto. Satoshi first published the Bitcoin white paper in late 2008. On January 3rd, 2009 Bitcoin’s first block was mined, otherwise referred to as the genesis block. Shortly thereafter the first version of the Bitcoin client was released. The Bitcoin client is the software needed to use Bitcoin, which we’ll cover in the tutorial.