Bitcoin

What Is Bitcoin?

Orange-pilled? That means you’re a Bitcoin maxi, who believes that BTC will change the world. Bitcoin is the world’s first decentralized digital currency, created in 2009 by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto which he first envisioned in a famous 2008 whitepaper. BTC enables peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions without requiring traditional financial intermediaries like banks or governments.

Built on blockchain technology, Bitcoin uses cryptographic proof instead of trust to secure transactions, with a fixed supply cap of 21 million coins and a network maintained by miners who validate transactions through computational work in exchange for newly minted bitcoins and transaction fees.

How It Works

Bitcoin operates through a distributed network of computers running Bitcoin software that maintains a shared ledger called the blockchain, where all transactions are recorded in chronological blocks and linked together cryptographically.

Users control bitcoin through private keys that generate unique wallet addresses, and transactions are broadcast to the network where miners compete to solve computational puzzles to add new blocks and earn rewards, which is known as proof-of-work.

The network adjusts mining difficulty approximately every two weeks to maintain a consistent 10-minute block time, while the Bitcoin halving mechanism reduces miner rewards by half roughly every four years to control inflation.

Key Bitcoin Facts

• Bitcoin has processed over 1.3 billion transactions since its inception with 99.98% uptime
• Mining consumes approximately 0.5% of global electricity, less than traditional banking systems
• Store bitcoin in hardware wallets and verify all transaction details before sending, as transactions are irreversible

Bitcoin’s conservative development approach and proven security track record, with up to 70,000 distributed nodes around the world supporting it, make it very secure, though quantum computing threats may require cryptographic upgrades within the next decade.