Thought you guys might enjoy this.

http://blockgeeks.com/guides/what-is-bitcoin-a-step-by-step-guide/

What is Bitcoin in a nutshell

Small wonder that Bitcoin emerged in 2008 just after Occupy Wall Street accused big banks of misusing borrowers’ money, duping clients, rigging the system, and charging boggling fees. Bitcoin pioneers wanted to put the seller in charge, eliminate the middleman, cancel interest fees, and make transactions transparent, to hack corruption and cut fees. They created a decentralized system, where you could control your funds and know what was going on.

Bitcoin has come far in a relatively short time. All over the world, companies, from REEDS Jewelers, a large jewelry chain in the US, to a private hospital in Warsaw, Poland, accept its currency. Billion dollar businesses such as Dell, Expedia, PayPal, and Microsoft do, too. Websites promote it, publications such as Bitcoin Magazine publish its news, forums discuss cryptocurrency and trade its coins. It has its application programming interface (API), price index, and exchange rate.

Problems include thieves hacking accounts, high volatility, and transaction delays. On the other hand, people in third world countries may find Bitcoin their most reliable channel yet for giving or receiving money.

What is Bitcoin in-depth?
At its simplest, Bitcoin is either virtual currency or reference to the technology. You can make transactions by check, wiring, or cash. You can also use Bitcoin (or BTC), where you refer the purchaser to your signature, which is a long line of security code encrypted with 16 distinct symbols. The purchaser decodes the code with his smartphone to get your cryptocurrency. Put another way; cryptocurrency is an exchange of digital information that allows you to buy or sell goods and services.The transaction gains its security and trust by running on a peer-to-peer computer network that is similar to Skype, or BitTorrent, a file-sharing system.

 

 
http://blockgeeks.com/guides/what-is-bitcoin-a-step-by-step-guide/

Where can I find Bitcoins?

You can get your first bitcoins from any of these four places:

A cryptocurrency exchange where you can exchange ‘regular’ coins for bitcoins, or for satoshis, which are like the BTC-type of cents. Resources:  Coinbase and LocalBitcoins in the US & Canada, and BitBargain UK and Bittylicious in the UK.
A Bitcoin ATM (or cryptocurrency exchange) where you can change bitcoins or cash for another cryptocurrency. Resources: Your best bets are BTER, CoinCorner and Cryptsy.
A classified service where you can find a seller who will help you trade bitcoins for cash. Resources: The definitive site is LocalBitcoins.
You could sell a product or service for bitcoins. Resources: Sites like Brawker and Purse.
Caution! Bitcoin is notorious for scams, so before using any service look for reviews from previous customers or post your questions on the Bitcoin forum.

http://blockgeeks.com/zcash-mean-ethereum

Many of us at ConsenSys believe the Ethereum community should be excited about the launch of Zcash and the incredible partnership opportunities that exist to bring both blockchains closer to achieving our goals.

What is Zcash?
Zcash is a new cryptocurrency that launched on Friday, October 28, 2016. A clone of Bitcoin forked from the Bitcoin codebase 0.11, Zcash is differentiated from Bitcoin and Ethereum by the added functionality of completely private transactions. For that reason, Zcash has been hailed as “untraceable”.

To allow private transactions, Zcash employs a technology from a branch of cryptography and computer science called zero-knowledge proofs. Even the smartest mathematicians in the space describe zero-knowledge proofs as “moon math”and a handful of dedicated researchers worldwide have a complete understanding of the details of how it works.

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What is a zero-knowledge proof?
Simply put, a zero-knowledge proof means you can prove to someone that you’ve done a computation without their having to redo the computation themselves. The effect is that you can prove a statement true without revealing anything about it other than that it’s true.

Zero-knowledge proofs help make Zcash “untraceable” by creating private transactions on the public Zcash blockchain. Transactions on Zcash cryptographically obscure the addresses of the sender and recipient, as well as the value one address sends to another. This is unique in that other blockchains to date show the value transfer from one address to another, and the value being sent can be seen by anyone on the blockchain. Unlike other blockchains, Zcash users can cryptographically fully shield their transactions. The only thing that is disclosed is that “something” happened at a particular point in time.

The addresses sending Zcash are all pseudonymous, meaning that if you don’t know their actual identities or real-world addresses, you can’t see where the currency is flowing to or from.

For example, let’s say you have 100 wallets each with one bitcoin, and that’s all there is on the blockchain. Now let’s say five of these people cryptographically shield their bitcoins using zero-knowledge proofs. There would be 95 transparent coins and 5 shielded ones. The blockchain and the network keep track of the amount of coins that are shielded and don’t care who un-shields a portion later. The coins go into a big pool and when you pull a little piece out there’s no way to correlate it to what went into the pool. Zero-knowledge proofs prevent people from pulling more out of the pool than they put into the pool in the first place.

http://blockgeeks.com/zcash-mean-ethereum

…Application coin sales (often called “initial coin offerings” or ICOs) are a new form of crowdfunding and some can have as much legal merit as a Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaign…

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Image by Giuseppe Pepe
The  Initial Coin Offering phenomenon has started to play a significant role in the crypto-startup world. Lately, more and more experts are looking to decentralized crowd-funding methods with interest.

But, the absence of legal guidelines in the operation of these ICOs has resulted in more than a few scams. This is hardly abnormal for an entirely new, unregulated field; but, would-be investors, nonetheless, find it difficult to discern potential opportunities from grab-the-money-and-run schemes.

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If you look at lists of recent  Initial Coin Offering campaigns it is really hard to come up with any sort of reasonable filter. There’s so much to be obviously skeptical of in this space that wealthier and experienced investors won’t even consider it — with good reason.

http://blockgeeks.com/how-not-to-be-scammed-by-a-initial-coin-offering/

What is cryptocurrency? 21st-century unicorn – or the money of the future?

This introduction explains the most important thing about cryptocurrencies. After you‘ve read it, you‘ll know more about it than most other humans.

Today cryptocurrencies have become a global phenomenon known to most people. While still somehow geeky and not understood by most people, banks, governments and many companies are aware of its importance.

In 2016, you‘ll have a hard time finding a major bank, a big accounting firm, a prominent software company or a government that did not research cryptocurrencies, publish a paper about it or start a so-called blockchain-project.

 
http://blockgeeks.com/guides/what-is-cryptocurrency-everything-you-need-to-know-ultimate-guide/

How are you investing in [Suspicious link removed]panies and crypto?

http://blockgeeks.com/questions/when-investing-in-a-blockchain-startup-what-are-the-3-most-important-considerations/

What is Blockchain Technology? A step-by-step guide than anyone can understand

http://blockgeeks.com/guides/what-is-blockchain-technology-a-step-by-step-guide-than-anyone-can-understand/


Picture a spreadsheet that is duplicated thousands of times across a network of computers. Then imagine that this network is designed to regularly update this spreadsheet and you have a basic understanding of the blockchain.

Information held on a blockchain exists as a shared — and continually reconciled — database. This is a way of using the network that has obvious benefits. The blockchain database isn’t stored in any single location, meaning the records it keeps are truly public and easily verifiable. No centralized version of this information exists for a hacker to corrupt. Hosted by millions of computers simultaneously, its data is accessible to anyone on the internet.

To go in deeper with the google spreadsheet analogy I would like you to read this piece from a blockchain specialist.

Blockchain as Google Docs
 

“The traditional way of sharing documents with collaboration is to send a Microsoft Word document to another recipient, and ask them to make revisions to it. The problem with that scenario is that you need to wait until receiving a return copy before you can see or make other changes, because you are locked out of editing it until the other person is done with it. That’s how databases work today. Two owners can’t be messing with the same record at once.That’s how banks maintain money balances and transfers; they briefly lock access (or decrease the balance) while they make a transfer, then update the other side, then re-open access (or update again).With Google Docs (or Google Sheets), both parties have access to the same document at the same time, and the single version of that document is always visible to both of them. It is like a shared ledger, but it is a shared document. The distributed part comes into play when sharing involves a number of people.

Imagine the number of legal documents that should be used that way. Instead of passing them to each other, losing track of versions, and not being in sync with the other version, why can’t *all* business documents become shared instead of transferred back and forth? So many types of legal contracts would be ideal for that kind of workflow.

You don’t need a blockchain to share documents, but the shared documents analogy is a powerful one.”

Bitcoin has been proclaimed dead 89 times. It has been labeled a Ponzi scheme and a failed experiment. Writers have argued for it to be forgotten and for developers to move on to greener pastures. But moving beyond this rhetoric, it’s not all that difficult to compare the rise of bitcoin to that of another technology: the World Wide Web. http://blockgeeks.com/questions/what-is-your-future-predictions-of-bitcoin/#comment-604