Do you accept Bitcoin? That'll do nicely, says Apache Open-source project shop the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) is now funding its projects with Bitcoins. The US-based non-profit says it’s received 5.35915909 in BTC – just over $2,600 – in just 48 hours after saying it would accept the virtual currency. ASF says it decided to accept the e-coinage in response to an email …
For one, they're not items; just numbers that are debited from one account and credited to another (for a typical payment) or credited in exchange for a proof-of-work (mining).
For another, the actual units used by the protocol are "satoshis", which are 0.00000001 bitcoin each; BTC and mBTC are just convenience units.
"Coin" is a misnomer. It's a lot easier to think of it as a ledger (like a bank has) with balances associated with "addresses".
Then when you want to pay me, you write something like "Take all the funds from (NogginTheNog's first address) and move 0.35915909 to (Christophe's address) and the rest to (NogginTheNog's second address).", you sign it with the key proving you control the first address, and you broadcast it.
This is what it looks like: https://blockchain.info/tx/456f010bfe71ad3d0b01052e6fe81ddd1503d37eaa7db74105171c50a52f84d6
That's still not a completely accurate description, but it's a lot closer to what happens in reality than the analogy of individual coins being moved around.
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