Disclaimer: The information and mostly data points and statistics here are taken from CoinMarketCap.
What Is Bitcoin (BTC)?
Bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency at first portrayed in a 2008 whitepaper by an individual, or group of individuals, with pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. It was launched, in January 2009.
Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer online currency, meaning that all transactions happen directly between equal, independent network participants, without the need for any intermediary to permit or facilitate them.
According to Nakamoto’s own words, Bitcoin was created to allow “online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.”
Some concepts for a similar type of decentralized electronic currency precede BTC, but Bitcoin holds the distinction of being the first-ever cryptocurrency to come into actual use.
Who Are the Founders?
Bitcoin’s original inventor is known under a pseudonym, Satoshi Nakamoto. As of 2021, the true identity of the person — or organization — behind the alias remains unknown.
On October 31, 2008, Nakamoto published Bitcoin’s whitepaper, describing how a peer-to-peer, online currency could be implemented. They proposed to use a decentralized ledger of transactions packaged in batches (called “blocks”) and secured by cryptographic algorithms — the whole system would later be dubbed “blockchain.”
Just two months later, on January 3, 2009, Nakamoto mined the first block on the Bitcoin network, known as the genesis block, thus launching the world’s first cryptocurrency. Bitcoin price was $0 when first introduced, and most Bitcoins were obtained via mining, which only required moderately powerful devices (e.g., PCs) and mining software.
The first known Bitcoin commercial transaction occurred on May 22, 2010, when programmer Laszlo Hanyecz traded 10,000 Bitcoins for two pizzas. At Bitcoin price today, those pizzas would be worth a few million. This event is now known as “Bitcoin Pizza Day.” In July 2010, Bitcoin first started trading, with the Bitcoin price ranging from $0.0008 to $0.08.
However, while Nakamoto was the original inventor of Bitcoin and the author of its very first implementation, he handed the network alert key and control of the code repository to Gavin Andresen. The latter later became lead developer at the Bitcoin Foundation. Over the years, many people have contributed to improving the cryptocurrency’s software by patching vulnerabilities and adding new features.
Bitcoin’s source code repository on GitHub lists more than 750 contributors. Some of the key ones are Wladimir J. van der Laan, Marco Falke, Pieter Wuille, Gavin Andresen, Jonas Schnelli, and others.
Uniqueness of the coin
Bitcoin’s most unique advantage comes from the fact that it was the first cryptocurrency to appear on the market.
It has managed to create a global community and give birth to an entirely new industry of millions of enthusiasts who develop, invest in, trade, and use Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in their everyday lives. The emergence of the first cryptocurrency has created a conceptual and technological basis that subsequently inspired the development of thousands of competing projects.
The entire cryptocurrency market — now worth more than $2 trillion — is based on the idea realized by Bitcoin: money that can be sent and received by anyone, anywhere in the world, without reliance on trusted intermediaries, such as banks and financial services companies.
Thanks to its pioneering nature, BTC remains at the top of this energetic market after over a decade of existence. Even after Bitcoin has lost its undisputed dominance, it remains the most prominent cryptocurrency, with a market capitalization that surpassed the $1 trillion mark in 2021, after Bitcoin price hit an all-time high of $64,863.10 on April 14, 2021. This is primarily due to growing institutional interest in Bitcoin and the ubiquitousness of platforms that provide use-cases for BTC: wallets, exchanges, payment services, online games, and more.
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