Bitcoin (BTC) is a decentralized cryptocurrency originally described in a 2008 whitepaper by a person, or group of people, using the alias Satoshi Nakamoto. It was launched soon after, in January 2009. The identity of the creator of BTC has remained anonymous and it has been the subject of numerous discussions, even Elon Musk tried to guess who’s behind the number one cryptocurrency.
Bitcoin uses peer-to-peer technology to operate with no central authority or banks; managing transactions and the issuing of bitcoins is carried out collectively by the network. Bitcoin is open-source; its design is public, nobody owns or controls Bitcoin and everyone can take part. Through many of its unique properties, Bitcoin allows exciting uses that could not be covered by any previous payment system.
Anyone who’s interested in BTC should read its whitepaper to learn more about it. It was released on October 31, 2008 and described how a peer-to-peer, online currency could be implemented. It proposed to use a decentralized ledger of transactions packaged in batches or blocks and secured by cryptographic algorithms. This whole system is what we know as blockchain.
On January 3, 2009, Nakamoto mined the first block on the Bitcoin network, thus launching the world’s first cryptocurrency. Its price was US$0 at first, and most Bitcoins were obtained via mining, which only required moderately powerful devices and mining software.
When BTC first started trading, in 2010, its value was between US$0.0008 and US$0.08. However, it kept growing over the years, its software has been improved and the Bitcoin Foundation was born to coordinate the efforts of the members in the Bitcoin community, help to create awareness of the benefits of Bitcoin, how to use it and its related technology requirements, for technologists, regulators, the media and everyone globally.
According to CoinMarketCap, the price of Bitcoin at the moment of writing is US$42.174,27 with a 24-hour trading volume of US$20.180.084.381. Bitcoin is currently the number one cryptocurrency in CoinMarketCap’s ranking, with a live market cap of US$798.463.852.330. It has a circulating supply of 18.932.487 BTC coins and a maximum supply of 21.000.000 BTC coins.The top cryptocurrency exchanges for trading in Bitcoin stock are currently Binance, OKEx, Mandala Exchange, CoinTiger and CoinFLEX.
