Explain Bitcoin Like I’m Five

We’re sitting on a park bench. It’s a great day.
I have one apple with me. I give it to you.
You now have one apple and I have zero.
That was simple, right?
Let’s look closely at what happened:
My apple was physically put into your hand.
You know it happened. I was there. You were there. You touched it.
We didn’t need a third person there to help us make the transfer. We didn’t need to pull in Uncle Tommy (who’s a famous judge) to sit with us on the bench and confirm that the apple went from me to you.
The apple’s yours! I can’t give you another apple because I don’t have any left. I can’t control it anymore. The apple left my possession completely. You have full control over that apple now. You can give it to your friend if you want, and then that friend can give it to his friend. And so on.
So that’s what an in-person exchange looks like. I guess it’s really the same, whether I’m giving you a banana, a book, or say a quarter, or a dollar bill….
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Back to apples!

Now say, I have one digital apple. Here, I’ll give you my digital apple.
Ah! Now it gets interesting. The apple is digital and we can just double the ledgers and the one apple I give you is now two apples! Understand? Two Apples! That is more Apples to eat, they are delicious, and you have twice as many Apples using Bitcoin. That is about all you need to know, that and Whales love double the Apples.

That was tasty, why not do it again, we did it once, so now you get four Apples using Bitcoin, or, you get four Bitcoins for one, and we can just keep splitting the ledgers until we can feed the entire world with a single apple, that is the magic of Bitcoin!

I simplified quite a bit

It is a bit more complex as there are competing interests that keep Bitcoin from being changed without proof of work consensus, that is what gives Bitcoin the value, the immutable blockchain and the trust built up over time making it into a digital currency and a commodity, but that all changes now, Bitcoin will multiply and be two Bitcoins, and if you think they won’t do it again, you might just be underestimating how bad greed can get with some people.