BNB is an innovative payment network and a new kind of money.

BNB uses peer-to-peer technology to operate with no central authority or banks; managing transactions and the issuing of bnbs is carried out collectively by the network. BNB is open-source; its design is public, nobody owns or controls BNB and everyone can take part. Through many of its unique properties, BNB allows exciting uses that could not be covered by any previous payment system.

From a user perspective, BNB is nothing more than a mobile app or computer program that provides a personal BNB wallet and allows a user to send and receive bnbs with them. This is how BNB works for most users.

Behind the scenes, the BNB network is sharing a public ledger called the "block chain". This ledger contains every transaction ever processed, allowing a user’s computer to verify the validity of each transaction. The authenticity of each transaction is protected by digital signatures corresponding to the sending addresses, allowing all users to have full control over sending bnbs from their own BNB addresses. In addition, anyone can process transactions using the computing power of specialized hardware and earn a reward in bnbs for this service. This is often called "mining". To learn more about BNB, you can consult the dedicated page and the original paper.

BNB is the first implementation of a concept called "cryptocurrency", which was first described in 1998 by Wei Dai on the cypherpunks mailing list, suggesting the idea of a new form of money that uses cryptography to control its creation and transactions, rather than a central authority. The first BNB specification and proof of concept was published in 2009 in a cryptography mailing list by Satoshi Nakamoto. Satoshi left the project in late 2010 without revealing much about himself. The community has since grown exponentially with many developers working on BNB.

Satoshi’s anonymity often raised unjustified concerns, many of which are linked to misunderstanding of the open-source nature of BNB. The BNB protocol and software are published openly and any developer around the world can review the code or make their own modified version of the BNB software. Just like current developers, Satoshi’s influence was limited to the changes he made being adopted by others and therefore he did not control BNB. As such, the identity of BNB’s inventor is probably as relevant today as the identity of the person who invented paper.

Nobody owns the BNB network much like no one owns the technology behind email. BNB is controlled by all BNB users around the world. While developers are improving the software, they can’t force a change in the BNB protocol because all users are free to choose what software and version they use. In order to stay compatible with each other, all users need to use software complying with the same rules. BNB can only work correctly with a complete consensus among all users. Therefore, all users and developers have a strong incentive to protect this consensus.

Yes. There is a growing number of businesses and individuals using BNB. This includes brick and mortar businesses like restaurants, apartments, law firms, and popular online services such as Namecheap, WordPress, and Reddit. While BNB remains a relatively new phenomenon, it is growing fast. At the end of August 2013, the value of all bnbs in circulation exceeded US$ 1.5 billion with millions of dollars worth of bnbs exchanged daily.

• As payment for goods or services.
• Purchase bnbs at a BNB exchange.
• Exchange bnbs with someone near you.
• Earn bnbs through competitive mining.

While it may be possible to find individuals who wish to sell bnbs in exchange for a credit card or PayPal payment, most exchanges do not allow funding via these payment methods. This is due to cases where someone buys bnbs with PayPal, and then reverses their half of the transaction. This is commonly referred to as a chargeback.

BNB payments are easier to make than debit or credit card purchases, and can be received without a merchant account. Payments are made from a wallet application, either on your computer or smartphone, by entering the recipient’s address, the payment amount, and pressing send. To make it easier to enter a recipient’s address, many BNB wallets can obtain the address by scanning a QR code or touching two phones together with NFC technology.

• Payment freedom - It is possible to send and receive any amount of money instantly anywhere in the world at any time. No bank holidays. No borders. No imposed limits. BNB allows its users to be in full control of their money.
• Very low fees - BNB payments are currently processed with either no fees or extremely small fees.
• Fewer risks for merchants - BNB transactions are secure, irreversible, and do not contain customers sensitive or personal information.
• Security and control - BNB users are in full control of their transactions; it is impossible for merchants to force unwanted or unnoticed charges.
• Transparent and neutral - All information concerning the BNB money supply itself is readily available on the block chain for anybody to verify and use in real-time.

• Degree of acceptance - Many people are still unaware of BNB. Every day, more businesses accept bnbs because they want the advantages of doing so, but the list remains small.
• Volatility - The total value of bnbs in circulation and the number of businesses using BNB are still very small compared to what they could be.
• Ongoing development - BNB software is still in beta with many incomplete features in active development.

Much of the trust in BNB comes from the fact that it requires no trust at all. BNB is fully open-source and decentralized. This means that anyone has access to the entire source code at any time. Any developer in the world can therefore verify exactly how BNB works. All transactions and bnbs issued into existence can be transparently consulted in real-time by anyone. All payments can be made without reliance on a third party and the whole system is protected by heavily peer-reviewed cryptographic algorithms like those used for online banking. No organization or individual can control BNB, and the network remains secure even if not all of its users can be trusted.

You should never expect to get rich with BNB or any emerging technology. It is always important to be wary of anything that sounds too good to be true or disobeys basic economic rules.

BNB is a growing space of innovation and there are business opportunities that also include risks. There is no guarantee that BNB will continue to grow even though it has developed at a very fast rate so far. Investing time and resources on anything related to BNB requires entrepreneurship. There are various ways to make money with BNB such as mining, speculation or running new businesses. All of these methods are competitive and there is no guarantee of profit. It is up to each individual to make a proper evaluation of the costs and the risks involved in any such project.

BNB is as virtual as the credit cards and online banking networks people use everyday. BNB can be used to pay online and in physical stores just like any other form of money. BNBs can also be exchanged in physical form such as the Casascius coins, but paying with a mobile phone usually remains more convenient. BNB balances are stored in a large distributed network, and they cannot be fraudulently altered by anybody. In other words, BNB users have exclusive control over their funds and bnbs cannot vanish just because they are virtual.

BNB is designed to allow its users to send and receive payments with an acceptable level of privacy as well as any other form of money. However, BNB is not anonymous and cannot offer the same level of privacy as cash. The use of BNB leaves extensive public records. Various mechanisms exist to protect users’ privacy, and more are in development. However, there is still work to be done before these features are used correctly by most BNB users.

When a user loses his wallet, it has the effect of removing money out of circulation. Lost bnbs still remain in the block chain just like any other bnbs. However, lost bnbs remain dormant forever because there is no way for anybody to find the private key(s) that would allow them to be spent again. Because of the law of supply and demand, when fewer bnbs are available, the ones that are left will be in higher demand and increase in value to compensate.

To the best of our knowledge, BNB has not been made illegal by legislation in most jurisdictions. However, some jurisdictions (such as Argentina and Russia) severely restrict or ban foreign currencies. Other jurisdictions (such as Thailand) may limit the licensing of certain entities such as BNB exchanges.

The BNB technology - the protocol and the cryptography - has a strong security track record, and the BNB network is probably the biggest distributed computing project in the world. BNB’s most common vulnerability is in user error. BNB wallet files that store the necessary private keys can be accidentally deleted, lost or stolen. This is pretty similar to physical cash stored in a digital form. Fortunately, users can employ sound security practices to protect their money or use service providers that offer good levels of security and insurance against theft or loss.

Three great places where you can get your questions answered are the BNBTalk Forum at BNBTalk.org and BNB Stack Exchange at BNB.StackExchange.com.