Bitcoin

[mr_lebowski]

17. Perhaps if I called it a coin wallet it would make more sense?

The bank is part of the bitcoin system itself, every coin (there's also partials) that's mined belongs to someone wallet, and that's like a numbered account a person can just create in the system by installing free software and saying 'make me a wallet'. Might even be able to make one via a web interface, not sure on that one.

If you installed bitcoin mining software on your computer, and set about mining coin, and you successfully mined some, you'd then have a coin wallet with bitcoin in it.

Or if you sold someone something for bitcoin, that someone else could transfer it to your wallet.

In this process, there are no 'funds' that have to come from anywhere.

I know there are external banks that are separate enterprises from the coin mining systems themselves. They do thing like facilitate easier exchange between people, let you cash out your coin into real money, and would let you see lots of different types of cryptocurrency that you own, all in one place, not just bitcoin but other types. You can sorta move your coins out of your wallet that's part of the main system itself into these external banks, IOW. They're also numbered accounts.

If you buy someone elses coin with real-world money then you need some sort of real-world account to transfer that money to them ... from. Though I suppose cash is a possible means of exchange as well. I don't know how that process works exactly.