Читать книгу Cryptocurrency All-in-One For Dummies - Peter Kent, Kiana Danial - Страница 47

A cryptocurrency wallet is a software program that helps you manage your digital money. Although you may be the type of person who doesn’t like to carry around traditional wallets and would rather put your cash and credit cards right in your back pocket, you must have a digital cryptocurrency wallet if you want to use any type of cryptocurrency. There’s no way around it. Cryptocurrencies aren’t stored in a bank reserve like other types of traditional assets such as gold and cash. Without crypto wallets, the whole idea of cryptocurrencies dies! Cryptocurrency wallets are the air that keeps the system alive.

While, in theory, Bitcoin is decentralized and nobody controls anything, it’s actually run by a network that’s controlled and maintained by someone (whoever is hiding behind the name Satoshi Nakamoto). In other words, Bitcoin is distributed and miners are somewhat anonymous, but the actual blockchain is stored in its entirety by the network. It’s so large that miners have maybe 30 days’ worth of transactions and blocks stored on their devices; the full blockchain is actually stored in a somewhat centralized form by the network.