The original cryptocurrency that started the decentralized money revolution.
Overview
Bitcoin is the world's first decentralised digital currency, launched on 3 January 2009 by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto (whose real identity remains unknown to this day). The Bitcoin whitepaper, titled 'Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System', was published in October 2008 in the aftermath of the global financial crisis; the genesis block famously encodes the headline 'The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks', signalling the project's response to central-bank policy. Bitcoin introduced the concept of a peer-to-peer electronic cash system that operates without any central authority, bank, or government. Transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded on a public distributed ledger called a blockchain.
Bitcoin's total supply is hard-capped at 21 million coins — an economic property that cannot be changed without breaking backwards compatibility with the network's rules — making it a scarce, deflationary asset that is often compared to digital gold. New bitcoins are created through a process called mining, where specialised computers (ASICs) solve computational puzzles to validate transactions and secure the network in exchange for the block subsidy. The rate of new bitcoin creation is halved approximately every four years in an event known as the 'halving.' The most recent halving, in April 2024, reduced the block subsidy from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC per block. All Bitcoins in existence are expected to be issued by approximately the year 2140, after which miners will be compensated solely by transaction fees.
Over the years, Bitcoin has evolved from a niche experiment among cryptographers to a globally recognised store of value and medium of exchange. It is accepted by thousands of merchants, held on the balance sheets of publicly traded companies (MicroStrategy, Tesla, Block), and recognised as legal tender in El Salvador (since 2021). In January 2024 the U.S. SEC approved spot Bitcoin ETFs from BlackRock, Fidelity, Ark, and others, opening Bitcoin exposure to traditional investment accounts and pulling tens of billions of dollars of institutional flows into the asset. Bitcoin's market capitalisation consistently places it among the most valuable assets in the world.
Bitcoin has evolved technically through soft-fork upgrades. SegWit (2017) fixed transaction malleability and enabled the Lightning Network — a Layer 2 payment channel network that supports near-instant, low-fee Bitcoin payments. Taproot (2021) added Schnorr signatures, script-path spending via MAST, and improved privacy for advanced spending conditions. Ordinals (2023) opened up an ecosystem of on-chain data inscriptions and BRC-20 tokens on Bitcoin, followed by Runes (2024) and the ongoing BitVM and covenant proposals aimed at bringing more expressive functionality to Bitcoin without changing its foundational security model.
Bitcoin proved that money can exist and function without centralised control. It created an entirely new asset class, inspired thousands of other cryptocurrencies, and introduced blockchain technology to the world. Its fixed supply and decentralised nature make it a hedge against inflation and currency debasement — the primary argument driving corporate treasury adoption, sovereign strategic reserves, and the ongoing 'digital gold' thesis. Bitcoin also serves as the security and monetary base of a growing ecosystem: Lightning payments, Ordinals-based tokens and inscriptions, wrapped BTC on other chains, and increasingly BitVM-based rollups all inherit Bitcoin's Proof of Work security while extending its utility. Whether or not Bitcoin ever becomes 'the' global currency, its role as the first and most-secured cryptocurrency network is now firmly established.
How It Works
The basics
Bitcoin uses a technology called blockchain — a chain of blocks where each block contains a batch of verified transactions and cryptographically references the previous block. When you send Bitcoin, your transaction is signed with your private key and broadcast to the network, where miners compete to include it in the next block by solving a Proof of Work puzzle: finding a nonce that makes the block header hash below the current difficulty target. The winning miner is rewarded with the block subsidy plus all transaction fees in the block.
Going deeper
Once a block is mined and added to the chain, the transaction is confirmed; each subsequent block built on top makes reversing it exponentially more expensive, so most exchanges and merchants treat 3-6 confirmations (30-60 minutes) as final. Bitcoin uses the UTXO model — your wallet balance is the sum of unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs) sent to your addresses, and each new transaction consumes existing UTXOs and produces new ones. Your Bitcoin is controlled by whoever holds the private key corresponding to the address that received it.
Under the hood
As long as you control your private key (typically backed up as a 12- or 24-word seed phrase), you control your Bitcoin — no company, bank, or government can freeze, seize, or reverse valid transactions on the network. Difficulty automatically adjusts every 2016 blocks (~2 weeks) to keep block times close to 10 minutes even as network hash-rate changes.
Pros & Cons
- Most decentralized and secure cryptocurrency network in existence
- Hard-capped supply of 21 million coins provides scarcity and inflation resistance
- Largest market capitalization and highest liquidity of any crypto asset
- Widely accepted by merchants, exchanges, and institutional investors
- Battle-tested for over 15 years with zero successful attacks on its core protocol
- Proof of Work mining consumes significant amounts of electricity
- Transaction speeds are slow compared to newer blockchains (7 transactions per second on the base layer)
- Transaction fees can spike during periods of high network congestion
- Limited programmability — not designed for complex smart contracts
- Price volatility remains high compared to traditional financial assets
Use Cases
- Store of value and long-term savings (often called 'digital gold')
- Cross-border remittances without intermediaries or high bank fees
- Inflation hedge in countries experiencing currency debasement
- Merchant payments via the Lightning Network for fast, low-cost transactions
- Institutional treasury reserves for public companies and sovereign wealth funds
Price Chart
Historical USD price from CoinGecko. Educational reference — not investment advice.
Live Market Data
- Market Cap Rank
- #1
- Market Cap
- $1.50T
- 24h Volume
- $29.28B
- Fully Diluted Val
- $1.50T
- All-Time High
- $126,080.00-40.83%October 2025
- All-Time Low
- $67.81July 2013
- 24h Range
- $73,709.00 – $76,007.00
Market data from CoinGecko, refreshed every 15 minutes. Educational reference only — not investment advice.
Project Health
Dev activity via CoinGecko, TVL/audit status via DefiLlama; official links are the project’s own. Presence here is not an endorsement.
Bitcoin network
Live on-chain conditions — the fee to get a transaction confirmed, in satoshis per virtual byte (sat/vB).
Next difficulty adjustment: estimated -6.31% (72% through the current epoch, ~Nov 13, 2026).
Via mempool.space. Fees fluctuate with demand; figures are current estimates, not advice.
Public-company BTC treasuries
- StrategyUS849,327 BTC4.04%
- MetaplanetJP44,000 BTC0.21%
- Twenty One CapitalUS43,514 BTC0.21%
- StriveUS43,124 BTC0.20%
- MARA HoldingsUS35,577 BTC0.17%
- Bitcoin Standard Treasury CompanyUS30,021 BTC0.14%
Via CoinGecko. Institutional-holdings context only — not investment advice.
Where BTC trades
The most active markets for BTC by 24h volume. Informational only — these are not affiliate links or endorsements.
Data via CoinGecko. Always verify you are on an exchange’s official domain before trading.
Latest Bitcoin news
Headlines via crypto news RSS- BTC price eyes $73K amid Nvidia volatility: Three things to know in Bitcoin this weekCointelegraph · Nov 9, 2026
- Bitcoin ETFs shed $1.3B in biggest weekly outflow since late JuneCointelegraph · Nov 9, 2026
- This Bitcoin Developer’s Idea Would Make Quantum Attacks a Losing BetDecrypt · Nov 8, 2026
- Bitcoin ETFs flip negative for 2026 after $1.28 billion outflow week, worst since JuneThe Block · Nov 7, 2026
- Bitcoin holders have received eCash — What can you do with it?Cointelegraph · Nov 7, 2026
Headlines link to third-party publishers and are not endorsements or investment advice.
Technical Details
- Consensus
- Proof of Work (SHA-256)
- Launch Year
- 2009
- Founder
- Satoshi Nakamoto (pseudonymous)
- Max Supply
- 21,000,000 BTC
- Blockchain
- Bitcoin
- Website
- bitcoin.org
Frequently asked questions
What is Bitcoin (BTC)?
Bitcoin is the world's first decentralised digital currency, launched on 3 January 2009 by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto (whose real identity remains unknown to this day). The Bitcoin whitepaper, titled 'Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System', was published in October 2008 in the aftermath of the global financial crisis; the genesis block famously encodes the headline 'The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks', signalling the project's response to central-bank policy. Bitcoin introduced the concept of a peer-to-peer electronic cash system that operates without any central authority, bank, or government. Transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded on a public distributed ledger called a blockchain. Bitcoin's total supply is hard-capped at 21 million coins — an economic property that cannot be changed without breaking backwards compatibility with the network's rules — making it a scarce, deflationary asset that is often compared to digital gold. New bitcoins are created through a process called mining, where specialised computers (ASICs) solve computational puzzles to validate transactions and secure the network in exchange for the block subsidy. The rate of new bitcoin creation is halved approximately every four years in an event known as the 'halving.' The most recent halving, in April 2024, reduced the block subsidy from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC per block. All Bitcoins in existence are expected to be issued by approximately the year 2140, after which miners will be compensated solely by transaction fees. Over the years, Bitcoin has evolved from a niche experiment among cryptographers to a globally recognised store of value and medium of exchange. It is accepted by thousands of merchants, held on the balance sheets of publicly traded companies (MicroStrategy, Tesla, Block), and recognised as legal tender in El Salvador (since 2021). In January 2024 the U.S. SEC approved spot Bitcoin ETFs from BlackRock, Fidelity, Ark, and others, opening Bitcoin exposure to traditional investment accounts and pulling tens of billions of dollars of institutional flows into the asset. Bitcoin's market capitalisation consistently places it among the most valuable assets in the world. Bitcoin has evolved technically through soft-fork upgrades. SegWit (2017) fixed transaction malleability and enabled the Lightning Network — a Layer 2 payment channel network that supports near-instant, low-fee Bitcoin payments. Taproot (2021) added Schnorr signatures, script-path spending via MAST, and improved privacy for advanced spending conditions. Ordinals (2023) opened up an ecosystem of on-chain data inscriptions and BRC-20 tokens on Bitcoin, followed by Runes (2024) and the ongoing BitVM and covenant proposals aimed at bringing more expressive functionality to Bitcoin without changing its foundational security model.
What is Bitcoin used for?
Bitcoin proved that money can exist and function without centralised control. It created an entirely new asset class, inspired thousands of other cryptocurrencies, and introduced blockchain technology to the world. Its fixed supply and decentralised nature make it a hedge against inflation and currency debasement — the primary argument driving corporate treasury adoption, sovereign strategic reserves, and the ongoing 'digital gold' thesis. Bitcoin also serves as the security and monetary base of a growing ecosystem: Lightning payments, Ordinals-based tokens and inscriptions, wrapped BTC on other chains, and increasingly BitVM-based rollups all inherit Bitcoin's Proof of Work security while extending its utility. Whether or not Bitcoin ever becomes 'the' global currency, its role as the first and most-secured cryptocurrency network is now firmly established.
How does Bitcoin work?
Bitcoin uses a technology called blockchain — a chain of blocks where each block contains a batch of verified transactions and cryptographically references the previous block. When you send Bitcoin, your transaction is signed with your private key and broadcast to the network, where miners compete to include it in the next block by solving a Proof of Work puzzle: finding a nonce that makes the block header hash below the current difficulty target. The winning miner is rewarded with the block subsidy plus all transaction fees in the block.
What consensus mechanism does Bitcoin use?
Proof of Work (SHA-256)
What are the pros and cons of Bitcoin?
Pros: Most decentralized and secure cryptocurrency network in existence; Hard-capped supply of 21 million coins provides scarcity and inflation resistance; Largest market capitalization and highest liquidity of any crypto asset; Widely accepted by merchants, exchanges, and institutional investors; Battle-tested for over 15 years with zero successful attacks on its core protocol. Cons: Proof of Work mining consumes significant amounts of electricity; Transaction speeds are slow compared to newer blockchains (7 transactions per second on the base layer); Transaction fees can spike during periods of high network congestion; Limited programmability — not designed for complex smart contracts; Price volatility remains high compared to traditional financial assets.
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References & further reading
- primaryBitcoin whitepaper (Nakamoto, 2008)
The original nine-page paper that launched the network.
archived copy ↗ - primary
- primarySEC — Spot Bitcoin ETF approval order (Jan 2024)
Landmark regulatory decision that unlocked institutional flows.
archived copy ↗ - secondaryChainalysis 2025 Crypto Crime Report — Bitcoin flows
On-chain analysis of Bitcoin volume by category.