You hold bitcoins in an online wallet.. This is an account set up on a secure third-party website. Unlike banks, wallet firms won't invest your money. Nor do they guarantee the same protections afforded banks by institutions like the FDIC.
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/bitcoins-virtual-currency-explained-idiot/story?id=20926230
Bitcoins have value because they are useful and because they are scarce. As they are accepted by more merchants, their value will stabilize. See the list of Bitcoin-accepting sites. When we say that a currency is backed up by gold, we mean that there's a promise in place that you can exchange the currency for gold.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Help:FAQ
Members of Congress today will get a crash course on bitcoin, the digital currency that allows users to conduct transactions online. In just five years the virtual currency has gone from being worth pennies to nearly $600 apiece.
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/bitcoins-virtual-currency-explained-idiot/story?id=20926230
Bitcoin can be used to buy things electronically. In that sense, it’s like conventional dollars, euros, or yen, which are also traded digitally. However, bitcoin’s most important characteristic, and the thing that makes it different to conventional money, is that it is decentralized. No single institution controls the bitcoin network.
http://www.coindesk.com/information/what-is-bitcoin/
Last updated: 20th March 2015. Bitcoin is a form of digital currency, created and held electronically. No one controls it. Bitcoins aren’t printed, like dollars or euros – they’re produced by people, and increasingly businesses, running computers all around the world, using software that solves mathematical problems.
http://www.coindesk.com/information/what-is-bitcoin/
As the value of a bitcoin increases, the number of bitcoins required to purchase an item de creases. This is a deflationary economic model. As the average transaction size reduces, transactions will probably be denominated in sub-units of a bitcoin such as millibitcoins (Millies) or microbitcoins (Mikes).
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Help:FAQ
Bitcoins are the unit of currency of the Bitcoin system. A commonly used shorthand for this is “BTC” to refer to a price or amount (e.g. “100 BTC”). There are such things as physical bitcoins, but ultimately, a bitcoin is just a number associated with a Bitcoin Address. A physical bitcoin is simply an object, such as a coin, with the number carefully embedded inside.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Help:FAQ
That’s right. The bitcoin protocol – the rules that make bitcoin work – say that only 21 million bitcoins can ever be created by miners. However, these coins can be divided into smaller parts (the smallest divisible amount is one hundred millionth of a bitcoin and is called a ‘Satoshi’, after the founder of bitcoin).
http://www.coindesk.com/information/what-is-bitcoin/
They exist only online and are not controlled by a central authority like the Federal Reserve. If hard currency is like a record, then a bitcoin is like an MP3. That means you can't get them from a bank, or drop them in a wishing well. All transactions take place in an online marketplace, where users are untraceable.
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/bitcoins-virtual-currency-explained-idiot/story?id=20926230
Current count. Also see Total bitcoins in circulation chart. The number of blocks times the coin value of a block is the number of coins in existence. The coin value of a block is 50 BTC for each of the first 210,000 blocks, 25 BTC for the next 210,000 blocks, then 12.5 BTC, 6.25 BTC and so on.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Help:FAQ
what is bitcoins used for
Bitcoins are used to buy things electronically.