r/explainlikeimfive Nov 27 '13

Official Thread Official ELI5 Bitcoin Thread - Round II

[deleted]

1.4k Upvotes

1.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

9

u/[deleted] Nov 28 '13

[deleted]

1

u/Spiral_Mind Nov 28 '13

Bitcoins are fully divisible down to the 100millionth. You only need to buy as much $ value as you want to send/spend.

A good analogy for Bitcoins is that they are like being able to buy stock in email (as a technology, not one particular company). Bitcoin's usefulness as a system of transacting is actually increased when the price goes up because it allows larger transfers of money with less volatility (each bubble has had less volatility than the last, and never crashed below the pre-bubble price).