Bitcoin

BTC

Bitcoin was the first decentralized cryptocurrency ever built on top of a blockchain, created in 2009 by an anonymous individual or group known by the nickname Satoshi Nakamoto as part of an open source project.

Bitcoin is a form of digital currency and since 2008 has been the go-to choice for those seeking an alternative to government-backed currencies. Because Bitcoin has no connection to any country or bank, you need a digital wallet which can be downloaded free. All Bitcoin transactions are added to a group called blocks which are then solved by miners.

Though Bitcoin has been around since 2008, many people are only now becoming aware of its existence. Bitcoin works by eliminating the need for banks and other third parties by taking away the middleman out of transactions - unlike most currencies which exist only in physical form.

To understand the Bitcoin blockchain, imagine a book where each page number contains a signature that verifies both its content and that of previous pages. This signature is computed using an algorithm known as SHA-256 and cannot be reversed - in other words, we can calculate an A-256 signature from some content but cannot get that content if we know its SHA-256 signature. Taking our example back to our book analogy: if one page is torn out or added without being replaced, no one would know; all pages are copied between members of this distributed network structure which explains why Bitcoin Blockchain is considered distributed network.

Bitcoin is an open source project managed by a developer team with over 580 active contributors, whose code can be found on Github. The primary purpose of Bitcoin was to enable decentralized but trustworthy money transfers between individuals and businesses around the world. Nowadays, over 100.000 vendors accept Bitcoin payments for goods or services and there are between 2.9 to 5.8 million unique users using cryptocurrency wallets with Bitcoin addresses. Due to speculation, its price fluctuates frequently - sometimes up or down more than 20% per day!