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January 18, 2021

 After a few years, Saint Valentine was caught. He was thrown in jail and was told that he would die. Many of the young couples he had helped came to visit him. They threw flowers and notes up to his window to show the saint that they believed in love, just like he did.

 

One of these young people was the daughter of a prison guard. Her father allowed her to visit Valentine in his cell. Sometimes they sat together and talked for hours! But Valentine’s death was coming near, and he wanted to show the girl his gratitude. So he left his friend a little note thanking her for her kindness and friendship. He signed it, “Love from your Valentine”. That’s how the tradition of exchanging love messages on Valentine’s Day began.

 

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...continued Valentine's day

...continued Groundhog Day

In 1887, the first Groundhog Day was celebrated. Since then, Punxsutawney Phil was declared the official groundhog for Groundhog Day.

 

Many other cities celebrate Groundhog Day too. Pennsylvania is not alone. This year, Phil made his 131st prediction. And this year, Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow. Looks like it's 6 more weeks of winter for us! Looking at the winter storms across the country, it seems Phil’s prediction is spot on!

...continued B for Bitcoin

So, how does bitcoin work? When Joe makes a transaction with Karen using bitcoins, the transaction will get recorded on a list called a ledger. The ledger is received by everyone around the world. Then, maybe Karen sends the bitcoin she got from Joe to someone else, but, she cannot send the bitcoin to anyone else unless it is proven that Karen truly owns the bitcoin. This is virtual, so bitcoins cannot physically be given to someone else. Where will the proof of the transaction be? That would be in the public ledger. People around the world would see the transaction that Joe made, and then approve the transaction. Now, Karen can give the bitcoin to someone else. When a transaction like this adds up on the ledger, it becomes a blockchain. Think of it with actual blocks. Each transaction equals one block. As many blocks get piled up on top of each other, it makes a block tower, or a blockchain. Also, if a hacker attempts to change only one copy of the ledger, the hacker does not change the copy that other people around the world have received.

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Well, you already know by now how the public verifies transactions and all, but let’s get more specific. Who are the public? It's not like everyone is going to get a notification every second to approve a transaction. Only some people, called miners, do this. To complete a transaction, people have to go through a miner to make sure the transaction is true. Hold up though, no one would waste their time doing THIS. So, miners have to be paid. After miners approve lots of transactions, they will get a free bitcoin as a reward. You just learned how bitcoin works!


 

There is actually something quite interesting happening in the bitcoin world, though. Tesla had announced it had bought 1.5 billion dollars worth of bitcoins. They also said that people could pay with bitcoins to buy cars. After that news, the price rocketed up over $43,000 per bitcoin and is still rising till today (over $50,000 per bitcoin). Still, some people are a little skeptical about using bitcoin. They are thinking that when I buy a car for some amount of bitcoins, what if the price of bitcoin decreases? Then when I go to pick up the car, Tesla may ask me for twice as many bitcoins. Also, there have been incidents reported where some people have lost all their bitcoins and have lost their money. All your bitcoins are stored in the digital wallet on your hard drive. Sometimes, people mistakenly throw away their hard drive. In other instances, people have forgotten the password to their wallet. 

 

Here are some fun facts about bitcoin:

 

  • There are a maximum of 21 million bitcoins that can be mined. 

  • 2.6 million bitcoins are left to be mined.

  • There are thousands of cryptocurrencies in existence today besides Bitcoin.

  • Just around the time I was born, around Nov 2011, the price for bitcoin was 2$. Gosh, I just wish my parents had bought a bunch of bitcoins at this time! 

  • The first paper about bitcoin was published by Satoshi Nakamoto. However, this was not the inventor’s real name. The true identity of the inventor/inventors is still unknown.

 

Welp, that’s it. Next time you hear your parents talking about bitcoin, be sure to join in on the fun!

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