Bitcoin

What is Bitcoin?

Bitcoin is a digital asset and a payment system invented by Satoshi Nakamoto.

Transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a public dispersed ledger called a blockchain. Bitcoin is unique in that there are a finite number of them: 21 million. Bitcoins are created as a reward for a process known as mining. They can be exchanged for other currencies, products, and services.

As of February 2015, over 100,000 merchants and vendors accepted bitcoin as payment. Bitcoin History Bitcoin was created on October 31, 2008, by an anonymous person or group of people using the name Satoshi Nakamoto.Nakamoto released the software as open source code and announced it on The Cryptography Mailing List.

In January 2009, Nakamoto mined the first block of bitcoins ever (block number 0). In July 2010, Nakamoto handed over control of the source code repository and network alert key to Gavin Andresen, who then became the bitcoin lead developer at the Bitcoin Foundation, the 'an NGO dedicated to promoting and protecting the Bitcoin protocol'.

Nakamoto subsequently disappeared from any involvement in bitcoin. In March 2014, Newsweek published a cover story claiming that Dorian S. Nakamoto was the inventor of bitcoin. However, Satoshi Nakamoto denied this claim.