Bitcoins can be divided. Ana can take her pile of coins and mark them as "This half can be moved by Berta in the future and the other half can be moved by Charles in the future". Now what was one pile is now two piles.
Bitcoins can be combined. To combine two piles of coins into one, one has to be the owner of both piles.
I think the name "Bitcoin" is confusing, because the system doesn't really have coins — it has addresses and transactions. Money just flows from the output(s) of one transaction to the input(s) of another. BTC can be arbitrarily divided by creating a transaction with multiple outputs; one is the payee and one is change going back to the payer. (I apologize that that probably makes no sense; I think you really have to read Satoshi's paper to understand it.)
I guess the difference is you don't earn interest by holding other peoples bitcoins, you do by holding their cash. Apparently there is an android app coming.
No, it's not the same. Bitcoin is like gold, which you also can't use to pay for groceries. A better example is if you were to physically mail bars of gold vs digitally sending Bitcoin.
Each "bill" in bitcoin includes a full transaction history, which gets shared with every other bitcoin user. It's quite different knowing that a dollar bill got from A to B, vs a bitcoin which tells you exactly how it travelled from A to B.
Bitcoin, just like traditional money, can exist as a non-blockchain ledger entry in bank's computer system. This is how most exchanges and custodial wallets work.
The difference is, you can also self-custody your Bitcoin. Obviously what's in your custody is just a private key; but for all intents and purposes that is self-custody. You are the sole person in control of those coins.
So Bitcoin gives you the choice of how you want to store it. Traditional money does not give you that choice. At a certain point there are physical and practical limits to how much cash you can self-custody (not to mention transport or transfer from one place or person to another).
Consider the difference between a Bitcoin and dollars in your bank account. You can own Bitcoin but your bank account just shows how much dollars your bank owes you, you don't own any of the dollars yourself.
Bitcoins can be divided. Ana can take her pile of coins and mark them as "This half can be moved by Berta in the future and the other half can be moved by Charles in the future". Now what was one pile is now two piles.
Bitcoins can be combined. To combine two piles of coins into one, one has to be the owner of both piles.
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