As a new user, you can start using Bitcoin without having to understand the technicalities. Once you install a Bitcoin wallet on your computer or phone, it will generate your first Bitcoin address and can generate more addresses whenever you need them. You can give your address to your friends and they can pay you Bitcoin from that address, and vice versa. In fact, this works very much like email, except that a Bitcoin address should only be used once.
The balance
The Bitcoin blockchain is a public shared ledger on which the entire Bitcoin network depends. All confirmed transactions are included in the blockchain. This allows the Bitcoin wallet to calculate the available balance and verify that the new transaction is actually the consumer’s bitcoin. Cryptography ensures the integrity and chronology of the blockchain.
Trading
A transaction is a transfer of value between Bitcoin wallets contained in the blockchain. Bitcoin wallets hold a secret piece of data called a private key or seed that is used to sign transactions, providing mathematical proof that they came from the owner of the wallet. This signature also ensures that the transaction cannot be modified by anyone after it has taken place. All transactions are broadcast among users and begin to be confirmed by the Bitcoin network, usually within the next 10-20 minutes, through a process called mining.
Digging
Mining is a distributed consensus system for confirming transactions by including them in a blockchain. By mining, the data in the block chain can be forced to be stored in chronological order, maintaining the neutrality of the Bitcoin network, and allowing different computers on the Bitcoin network to agree on the state of the system. To be confirmed, a transaction must be packaged into a block that meets very strict cryptographic rules and verified through the Bitcoin network. These rules prevent changes to existing blocks, because if changes are made, all subsequent blocks become invalid. Mining is as hard as winning the lottery, and no one can easily and continuously add new blocks to the chain. Therefore, no group or individual can control what content is contained in the block chain or replace parts of the block chain in order to undo their transaction.