If you are new to online financial transactions, or you have just started reading about digital currencies such as Bitcoin, there are two words you will run into constantly and may well be confusing with one another: Bitcoin and blockchain. This article sets out how the two relate.
As most people know by now, Bitcoin is the most widely used digital currency there is. What tends to be less clear is what blockchain actually means. Blockchain is the technology that allows a transaction to take place without passing through a third party, with the aim of making online transactions more secure.
So Bitcoin and blockchain are not the same thing — but they are very closely related, because blockchain is the technology used to make handling Bitcoin secure.
Handling Bitcoin securely is what gives users confidence. That means sending and receiving over the blockchain, and it can also mean using a wallet built to hold Bitcoin — a Ledger Nano S, a Ledger Blue, a Trezor or a KeepKey hardware wallet — to add another layer of protection to how that digital currency is stored. Choosing several technologies that work together like this reinforces each one, and makes the whole thing easier to manage.
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What is blockchain, and what is it actually good for?
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