Bitcoin is a decentralized digital coin that uses a P2P internet protocol. It was created in 2009 by an anonymous programmer named Satoshi Nakamoto.

You can exchange Bitcoins through a computer without an intermediate bank or other financial institution. One bitcoin is divided into 100 million smaller units (that is eight decimal points) called satoshis, so you can make small payments.

Bitcoin is not like other coins: it has no central organization to regulate them. Instead, it works using a P2P internet protocol. The money is managed by bitcoin miners that confirm Bitcoin transactions and add them to a decentralized transaction log every ten minutes.

This video explains it in a simple way.

Follow these steps:

1. Get a wallet

A wallet lets you store Bitcoins and send/receive payments. There are mainly two ways of creating a wallet:

• The easy way: Get a wallet online using a secure website like blockchain.info
• Run a Bitcoin client on your computer. You can get the original Bitcoin client here.

2. Get bitcoins

There are many ways of getting bitcoins, some of them are: selling something for bitcoins, exchanging USD for bitcoins, etc.

One of the most popular websites for exchanging bitcoins and dollars is mtgox.com.

You can also mine bitcoins using your PC, that's known as mining bitcoins. More info about mining bitcoins can be found here.

3. Buy with bitcoins

There's an increasing amount of businesses and individuals accepting bitcoins the same way they do with dollars or euros.

Visit this page if you want to see a list of places accepting bitcoins.