Bitcoin BTC Price 97,134.22

What is cryptocurrency Bitcoin(BTC)?

Bitcoin is a decentralized cryptocurrency originally described in a 2008 official document by a person, or group of people, under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. Soon after that it was launched in January 2009.

Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer online currency, which means that all transactions occur directly between equal, independent network participants, without the need for any intermediary to resolve them or facilitate their use. Bitcoin was designed, according to Nakamoto, for "online payments to be sent directly from one party to another, bypassing financial institutions".

Some concepts of this type of decentralized electronic currency predate BTC, but Bitcoin is the first cryptocurrency in the world to enter real use.

Who are the creators of Bitcoin?

The original inventor of Bitcoin is known under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. As of 2020, the true identity of the person or organization behind the pseudonym remains unknown.

On October 31, 2008, Nakamoto published a Bitcoin whitepaper detailing how a peer-to-peer online currency could be implemented. He suggested using a decentralized register of transactions packed in so - called "blocks" and protected by cryptographic algorithms-later the entire system will be called "blockchain".

Just two months later, on January 3, 2009, Nakamoto mined the first block on the Bitcoin network, known as the genesis block, thereby launching the world's first cryptocurrency.

However, although Nakamoto was the inventor of Bitcoin, as well as the author of its very first implementation, over the years a large number of people contributed to improving the cryptocurrency's software by fixing vulnerabilities and adding new features.

What makes Bitcoin unique?

The most unique advantage of Bitcoin is that it was the very first cryptocurrency to appear on the market.

It managed to create a global community and spawn an entirely new industry consisting of millions of enthusiasts who create, invest, trade and use Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in their daily lives. The emergence of the first cryptocurrency created a conceptual and technological framework that later inspired the development of thousands of competing projects.

The entire cryptocurrency market, which is now worth more than $ 300 billion, is based on the idea implemented by Bitcoin: money can be sent and received by anyone anywhere in the world, without relying on trusted intermediaries such as banks and financial services companies.

Due to its innovative nature, BTC remains at the top of this revolutionary market after more than a decade of existence. Even after BTC lost its undisputed dominance, it remains the largest cryptocurrency with a market capitalization that ranged from $ 100 billion to $ 200 billion in 2020, thanks in large part to the ubiquity of platforms that provide use cases for BTC: wallets, exchanges, payment services, online games, and more.

How many Bitcoin coins are in circulation?

Currently, the total supply of Bitcoin is 19,785,072 coins BTC, in circulation there are 0.00000000 BTC.

Currently the exchange rate of Bitcoin is - 97,134.22 USD, with the 24-hour trading volume - 102,636,431,515 USD, market capitalization - 1,921,807,524,900 USD.

How many Bitcoins are in circulation?

The total amount of bitcoin is limited by its software and will never exceed 21 million coins. New coins are created during a process known as" mining": as transactions are transmitted over the network, they are collected by miners and packaged into blocks, which in turn are protected by complex cryptographic calculations.

As compensation for wasting their computing resources, miners are rewarded for each block they successfully add to the block chain. At the time of the launch of Bitcoin, the reward was 50 BTC per block: this number is halved with every 210,000 new blocks mined, which takes the network about four years. As of 2020, the block reward has been halved by three times and is 6.25 BTC.

Bitcoin was not pre-mined, which means that no coins were mined or distributed among the founders before they became available to the public. However, during the first few years of BTC's existence, competition between miners was relatively low, allowing the earliest members of the network to accumulate significant amounts of coins through regular mining. It is believed that Satoshi Nakamoto alone owns more than a million BTC.

How is the Bitcoin network protected?

Bitcoin is protected by the SHA-256 algorithm, which belongs to the SHA-2 family of hashing algorithms which is also used by its fork - Bitcoin Cash (BCH), as well as several other cryptocurrencies.