What Is Bitcoin

Bitcoin

 Is a cryptocurrency and worldwide payment system. It is the first decentralized digital currency. Its conception is peer-to-peer and transactions take place between users directly, without an intermediary. These transactions are verified by network nodes through the use of cryptography and recorded in a public distributed ledger called a blockchain. Bitcoin was invented by an unknown person or group of people under the name Satoshi Nakamoto and released as open-source software in 2009.

Bitcoins are created as a reward for a process known as mining. They can be exchanged for other currencies, products, and services. As of February 2015, over 100,000 merchants and vendors accepted bitcoin as payment. Research produced by the University of Cambridge estimates that in 2017, there are 2.9 to 5.8 million unique users using a cryptocurrency wallet, most of them using bitcoin

Symbol: ₿

Coins: Unspent outputs of transactions (in multiples of a satoshi)

Ledger start: 3 January 2009 (9 years ago)

Supply limit: ₿21,000,000

​¹⁄₁₀₀₀: millibitcoin

Founder: Satoshi Nakamoto

Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency and worldwide payment system. It is the first decentralized digital currency. Its conception is peer-to-peer and transactions take place between users directly, without an intermediary

Bitcoin is a digital currency (also called crypto-currency) that is not backed by any country's central bank or government. Bitcoins can be traded for goods or services with vendors who accept Bitcoins as payment

Bitcoin-to-Bitcoin transactions are made by digitally exchanging anonymous, heavily encrypted hash codes across a peer-to-peer (P2P) network. The P2P network monitors and verifies the transfer of Bitcoins between users. Each user's Bitcoins are stored in a program called a digital wallet, which also holds each address the user sends and receives Bitcoins from, as well as a private key known only to the user. 

The Bitcoin network is designed to mathematically generate no more than 21 million Bitcoins and the network is set up to regulate itself to deal with inflation. Bitcoins can be spent by initiating a transfer request from a Bitcoin address in the customer's wallet to a Bitcoin address in the vendor's wallet. As of this writing, one Bitcoin (also called a BTC)  is worth $104 -- but just as with stocks, the value of Bitcoins can fluctuate quickly. 

n the United States, Bitcoins are controversial because they can be used to anonymously transfer illicit funds or hide unreported income from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Bitcoin policy now requires transactions that involve traditional, government-backed currencies to be attached to an identity.