For the colloquial expression for coinage, see Bit (money).
"₿" redirects here. Not to be confused with "฿" for Thai baht.
Bitcoin
Logo
Denominations
Plural
Bitcoins
Symbol
₿ (Unicode: U+20BF₿BITCOIN SIGN)[1]
Code
BTC[a]
Precision
10−8
Subunits
1⁄1000
Millibitcoin
1⁄1000000
Microbitcoin
1⁄100000000
Satoshi[b][2]
Development
Original author(s)
Satoshi Nakamoto
White paper
"Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System"
Implementation(s)
Bitcoin Core
Initial release
0.1.0 / 9 January 2009 (15 years ago) (2009-01-09)
Latest release
25.1 / 19 October 2023 (6 months ago) (2023-10-19)[3]
Code repository
github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin
Development status
Active
Written in
C++
Source model
Free and open-source software
License
MIT License
Ledger
Ledger start
3 January 2009 (15 years ago) (2009-01-03)
Timestamping scheme
Proof of work (partial hash inversion)
Hash function
SHA-256 (two rounds)
Issuance schedule
Decentralized (block reward) Initially ₿50 per block, halved every 210,000 blocks
Block reward
₿3.125 (as of 2024[update])
Block time
10 minutes
Circulating supply
₿19,591,231 (as of 6 January 2024[update])
Supply limit
₿21,000,000[c]
Valuation
Exchange rate
Floating
Demographics
Official user(s)
El Salvador[4]
This article contains special characters. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols.
Bitcoin (abbreviation: BTC;[a] sign: ₿) is the first decentralized cryptocurrency. Nodes in the peer-to-peer bitcoin network verify transactions through cryptography and record them in a public distributed ledger, called a blockchain, without central oversight. Consensus between nodes is achieved using a computationally intensive process based on proof of work, called mining, that requires increasing quantities of electricity and guarantees the security of the bitcoin blockchain.[5]
Based on a free market ideology, bitcoin was invented in 2008 by Satoshi Nakamoto, an unknown person.[6] Use of bitcoin as a currency began in 2009,[7] with the release of its open-source implementation.[8]: ch. 1 In 2021, El Salvador adopted it as legal tender.[4] Bitcoin is currently used more as a store of value and less as a medium of exchange or unit of account. It is mostly seen as an investment and has been described by many scholars as an economic bubble.[9] As bitcoin is pseudonymous, its use by criminals has attracted the attention of regulators, leading to its ban by several countries as of 2021[update].[10]
^"Unicode 10.0.0". Unicode Consortium. 20 June 2017. Archived from the original on 20 June 2017. Retrieved 20 June 2017.
^Bradbury, Danny (November 2013). "The problem with Bitcoin". Computer Fraud & Security. 2013 (11): 5–8. doi:10.1016/S1361-3723(13)70101-5. Archived from the original on 18 January 2023. Retrieved 25 November 2023.
^"Bitcoin Core Releases". Archived from the original on 10 October 2014. Retrieved 24 October 2023 – via GitHub.
^ ab"El Salvador's dangerous gamble on bitcoin". The editorial board. Financial Times. 7 September 2021. Archived from the original on 7 September 2021. Retrieved 7 September 2021.
^Huang, Jon; O’Neill, Claire; Tabuchi, Hiroko (3 September 2021). "Bitcoin Uses More Electricity Than Many Countries. How Is That Possible?". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 17 February 2023. Retrieved 26 October 2022.
^S., L. (2 November 2015). "Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?". The Economist. Archived from the original on 22 November 2020. Retrieved 21 November 2023.
^Davis, Joshua (10 October 2011). "The Crypto-Currency: Bitcoin and its mysterious inventor". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on 1 November 2014. Retrieved 31 October 2014.
^Antonopoulos, Andreas M. (2014). Mastering Bitcoin: Unlocking Digital Crypto-Currencies. O'Reilly Media. ISBN 978-1-4493-7404-4.
^Wolff-Mann, Ethan (27 April 2018). "'Only good for drug dealers': More Nobel prize winners snub bitcoin". Yahoo Finance. Archived from the original on 12 June 2018. Retrieved 7 June 2018.
^Sun Yin, Hao Hua; Langenheldt, Klaus; Harlev, Mikkel; Mukkamala, Raghava Rao; Vatrapu, Ravi (2 January 2019). "Regulating Cryptocurrencies: A Supervised Machine Learning Approach to De-Anonymizing the Bitcoin Blockchain". Journal of Management Information Systems. 36 (1): 65. doi:10.1080/07421222.2018.1550550. ISSN 0742-1222. S2CID 132398387. Archived from the original on 21 April 2024. Retrieved 29 November 2023.
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or other symbols. Bitcoin (abbreviation: BTC; sign: ₿) is the first decentralized cryptocurrency. Nodes in the peer-to-peer bitcoin network verify transactions...
Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, a digital asset that uses cryptography to control its creation and management rather than relying on central authorities...
The Bitcoin protocol is the set of rules that govern the functioning of Bitcoin. Its key components and principles are: a peer-to-peer decentralized network...
Bitcoin Cash is a cryptocurrency that is a fork of Bitcoin. Bitcoin Cash is a spin-off or altcoin that was created in 2017. In November 2018, Bitcoin...
innovation of Bitcoin in 2008, and the early network effect gained by Bitcoin, tokens, cryptocurrencies, and other digital assets that were not Bitcoin became...
algorithms Taxation of cryptocurrency splits Bitcoin Law Anti-bitcoin law protests Translated from: "...bitcoin nespĺňa atribúty meny v právnom zmysle (jeho...
pseudonymous person or persons who developed Bitcoin, authored the Bitcoin white paper, and created and deployed Bitcoin's original reference implementation. As...
Bitcoin Core is free and open-source software that serves as a bitcoin node (the set of which form the Bitcoin network) and provides a bitcoin wallet which...
Bitcoin is one of the main cryptocurrencies used in dark web marketplaces due to the flexibility and relative anonymity of the currency. With Bitcoin...
Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008 to serve as the public distributed ledger for bitcoin cryptocurrency transactions, based on previous work by Stuart Haber, W...
El Salvador became the first country in the world to use bitcoin as legal tender, after having been adopted as such by the Legislative Assembly of El...
Bitcoin was designed by its pseudonymous inventor, Satoshi Nakamoto, to work as a currency, but its status as a currency is disputed. Economists define...
Some Bitcoin ATMs offer bidirectional functionality, enabling both the purchase of Bitcoin and the sale of Bitcoin for cash. In some cases, Bitcoin ATM...
Bitcoin City is a planned smart city project in La Unión, El Salvador. The planned city is intended to be a tax haven, and to use geothermal energy to...
The environmental effects of bitcoin are significant. Bitcoin mining, the process by which bitcoins are created and transactions are finalized, is energy-consuming...
Bitcoin forks are defined variantly as changes in the protocol of the bitcoin network or as the situations that occur "when two or more blocks have the...
open-source software project released under the MIT/X11 license. Inspired by Bitcoin, Litecoin was among the earliest altcoins, starting in October 2011. In...
The Bitcoin Foundation is an American organization that was formerly a nonprofit corporation. It was founded in September 2012 in an effort to restore...
notable commercial activities related to bitcoin. Common services are cryptocurrency wallet providers, bitcoin exchanges, payment service providers and...
of bitcoin rose to US$1.06, then fell to US$0.67 that April. This spike was encouraged by several Slashdot posts about it. In June 2011, bitcoin's price...
have arisen to improve the anonymity of cryptocurrencies, usually bitcoin (hence bitcoin mixer), since the digital currencies provide a public ledger of...
analysis company Chainalysis, around US$2.5 billion was laundered through Bitcoin between 2009 and 2018, and the fraction of cryptocurrency transactions...
early investor in Bitcoin, Bitcoin-related startups and an early promoter of Bitcoin. Ver has sometimes been referred to as "Bitcoin Jesus". He now primarily...
holding bitcoin, Ether, Litecoin, Ripple, and Bitcoin Cash. GDLC began trading publicly in October 2019. GBTC became an SEC-reporting bitcoin investment...
became involved with cryptocurrency early in its inception, co-founding Bitcoin Magazine in 2011. In 2014, Buterin deployed the Ethereum blockchain with...
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