Topic: How to explain bitcoin in 20 minutes? (Read 1307 times)

There are some great videos online, and if you check out bit99 on youtube, he has a great video doing just that.

Think of gold, but virtual. People "mine" for gold, by generating random numbers to solve a complex algorithm. By solving this, they are encrypting a block, which takes pending transactions and confirms them. Each block encrypts itself and the ones before it further. The incentive of mining a block is the "coinbase", a prize for mining a block. Currently you recieve 25 BTC. A bitcoin is basically a virtual asset, that has monetary value based on its demand.

It is impossible to explain bitcoins in just 20 minutes plainly, you need some references and other materials to explain how does bitcoin works, how you could use and earn with bitcoins. Just make them join to our forum and give them the threads needed.

It's really not possible to make someone understand bitcoin in just 20minutes. Only people need to take interest and learn themselves.

Show them a bunch of YouTube videos? You can't really explain in 20 minutes. Let them check out the Bitcoin discussion subsection here and check out the sticky topics.

why dont try to tell them some video from bitcoin.org website,they will more understand,and you just search some knowldege about based bitcoin working,ming bitcoin,and decentralized.

Explain bitcoin in 20 minutes , first introduce that bitcoin is the next online cryptocurrency that is now well used by many people all around the world, spend more time on introduction and the rest how bitcoin shall be used in the market and last how to earn bitcoins

I think as with all things of that nature, the best way would be for you to first gain a thorough understanding of Bitcoin's inner workings. That shouldn't be too hard if you are genuinely curious/excited about the technology. If you are truly thrilled about something, finding the best way to present it to others should come naturally  
Good luck!

Its easy to explain bitcoin in 20mins plus show some videos but the question is will they get it clear in just 20mins. I bet not, you can educate them day by day or it would be better if make them explore on theirselves after you explain what is it.

Bitcoin is something ultra-spectacular, over-innovative, hyper-secured technology, or I should say a "currency" filled with many super-features such as least fees for transactions via blockchain, which helps run the system smoothly by collecting all the information in it as a ledger in order for anyone to be able to check any of their transactions anytime...

I'm glad that they are helpful to you.

Well, I wanted to point out that some of the information might be false because the videos are somewhat old. What I meant with my statement is that you should do some research to verify the information or you could post the presentation here and we could help you make one last revision.

Not necessarily. If it is a presentation where openly questioning is allowed, then he would have to know the stuff well.

Yes exactly and just to add on e need to make sure we are explaining bitcoin to the right audience because if the person or the group whom we are explaining have little knowledge about cryptocoin then it will be much more easier for us. normally i create a curiosity before explaining to it anyone so that they should be willing to learn

i always like to bring the easy example where the blockcahin is a chain of safebox and everysafebox hold the reward, you then need the private key to access it

bitcoin in those safebox never move, you just grant the access if you have the key

To be able to explain it to others, you first have to understand it yourself, Danny and others already gave you lot of points to make your presentation but how you present it is based on how much of it you get.

I'd start with the concept of a permanent globally distributed immutable public storage that anyone could access to store or retrieve data without requiring permission from anyone else. 

Most people can see when it's pointed out to them that if such a thing existed, it would have an intrinsic value.

Then I'd talk about the storage having limitations that keep it's costs manageable (new data is added to the storage on average every 10 minutes, and is restricted to 1 megabyte added to the storage at a time).

Most people can see that this keeps storage costs manageable and that it creates a scarcity of access (limits the supply of access to the storage).

The next thing to solve is how to decide who gets their data into the storage at the next interval and who doesn't.

This is a good time to bring up proof-of-work and how it can be used to authorize submissions to the data storage.  Along with that you can bring up the concept of a self-adjusting difficulty for the proof-of-work to make sure that it takes an average of 10 minutes to accomplish (which ties back to the 10 minute average interval discussed earlier).

Now that individuals can choose to add stuff to the storage by completing the proof-of-work, there exists a market where these individuals will want to recover their costs if they don't have any data of their own that they need to add.  They can offer others space in their block for the data that those others might want to store.  They can then collect something of value in exchange for that storage space.

This is a good time to bring up the concept that users of this system could use a points system to bid on storage space.  Those that bid the most points would get priority over those that bid less points as long as those points were exchangeable everywhere for other items of value.

As a way to get the system up and running, and getting the points into the hands of the users of the system, each new block of data added to the system could include a permanent record of a number of points.  That record could include instructions that encumber those points with a requirement that must be met in order to transfer control of those points.

This would be a good time to bring up public key cryptography and digital signatures.

Since access to the storage has intrinsic value, and access to the storage requires access to these points, the points themselves now carry an intrinsic value.  People now desire control of these points and are willing to exchange other things of value for them so that they can store data in this public storage.  This creates a market of limited supply and increasing demand.

Keeping track of the requirements that need to be met to transfer control of the points would require a "permanent globally distributed immutable public storage that anyone could access to store or retrieve data without requiring permission from anyone else".  Interestingly, by creating this, one now exists.  As such, one of the most valuable and useful pieces of data to store in this public storage is records of amounts of points and what requirements they are encumbered by to transfer control of them.

At this point you could explain how transactions are structured, how they encumber the points (bitcoins) with requirements and how they show that those requirements have been met.

This use of the storage is so intrinsic to its continued existence that users could all agree that they will reject all blocks of data that are not structured in this transaction format.

At this point you could get into how the consensus rules are enforced and why it is impossible to change them without an overwhelming majority of participants.

By now you've described the blockchain and its purpose, transactions and their purpose, distributed consensus, and proof-of-work. If you point out that even with this transaction structure to the data, it is still possible to store other forms of data (by breaking it up across transactions, or by keeping the size of the data to be stored smaller than the transaction script limits).

If I'm not mistaken, that describes what bitcoin is, why it has value, and how it works.  You'll want to finish up with explaining how some of the peer-to-peer traffic works (finding peers, relaying transactions and blocks to connected peers, verifying the validity of everything received without trusting data from peers, etc).

thats so funny. there are lots of videos available on youtube which will explain them in easy way.
also it is completely depend on the learner because he should be capable of understanding it in 20 minutes and the video what he choses to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IP0jCjyrew8

you should look up the different "what is bitcoin" Intro Videos and pick one

this one is pretty good if you want to explain the "evolution of money" at the same time you explain bitcoin.

First video isn't really that much info, it's good if was presenting bitcoin for my grand parents or some old people, but it did point good advantages of bitcoins.
Second video is awesome, it describes the thing in 5 minutes giving me around 15 minutes to dive into details.
Third have good details too, currently watching the 20min one.
And I'm not looking for you guys to do it for me, just wanted help on planning it out, like what are the prerequisites and order of topics, what points to just mention and what points to add details for.


First videos is a nice starting about the fiat money and system, however it's too much time and more like for economy department not computer one.
Other 2 videos were already posted.

My current vague plan is a quick basics and ideas for the bitcoin (7 min max) then dive a bit into the technical stuff, public and private key concepts are sure to be included as they'll benefit even outside the world of bitcoin.

Thanks for the help guys, I'd still like few opinions on which points to provide details on and which to just name them.

i think you should start off with these videos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L04VLaZX1y8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gc2en3nHxA4

then look at this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9jOJk30eQs yourself do our own explaintion of the blockchain.

I think we really need to keep this very basic, do going into details about blocklimit or what not.

maybe you can also talk about public/private key encryption concepts...

What is Bitcoin? (v2)
The Essence of How Bitcoin Works (Non-Technical)
How Bitcoin Works in 5 Minutes (Technical)

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These should help. Keep in mind that I can't vouch for the information to be 100% accurate (do the research). You are supposed to make the presentation yourself, not let others do it for you.

They either have not heard about it, or they have misunderstood it. These are the two likely possibilities, trust me.