And yes, there are still regulatory issues. Unlike typical bitcoin wallets, peer-to-peer exchanges work similarly to Craigslist for cryptocurrency, allowing buyers and sellers in the same areas to find each other and meet up to trade bitcoins for cash. Anthony Xie. Find a Bitcoin Exchange. At its most basic level, blockchain is literally a chain of blocks—only not in the traditional sense of those words. These networks often consist of thousands or in the case of bitcoin, about 5 million computers spread across the globe. When you go to make a purchase using bitcoin, that network of computers rushes to check that your transaction happened in the way you said it did.