What the heck is Bitcoin?

Bitcoin (BTC) history starts all the way from 2008. BTC is a digital currency money.

You can use it to pay for goods and services online and in the real world as well.

However, some countries have banned and  not many shops accept it yet.

Bitcoin is a medium of exchange.

It allows people to send or receive money across the internet, without being linked to a real identity.

The History of bitcoin (BTC)

Bitcoin is the first blockchain-based cryptocurrency in the world.

It is also the most famous cryptocurrency ever and successful.

BTC was invented by the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008 and launched in early 2009.

The first transaction took place between Nakamoto and an early adopter of bitcoin Hal Finney in January 2009.

In 2009, Bitcoin still had a flat or literally no value. It was commonly used for hobby purposes by its fans till 2010 when the first bitcoin market was created.

In 2010, the first world real transaction was made.  A bitcoin miner bought two pizzas in Florida for 10,000 bitcoins

Years later the bitcoin gained more exposure to the market but it was short lived.

The federal authorities shut down the Silk Road website, which used bitcoins for black market transactions, October 2013.

Never the less, bitcoin remained popular.

So it was time to get another website where to do transactions from. The rise of mt Gox. By 2014, it was filling for bankruptcy. It lost more than 850000 bitcoins

Since then it has struggled to breakthrough up to 2016 and its value has been going higher and higher.

Within first 7 years, bitcoin’s price  increased from zero to more than 10,000 dollars and its transaction volume reached more than 260,000 daily transactions by Nov 2017.

Today, bitcoin is traded on a number of exchanges, such as Coinbase, Coinsquare  and Bittylicious. It is also used to buy goods and services such as gold, real estate to mention but a few.

Understanding Bitcoin

Like we discussed earlier, Bitcoin history is quite interesting especially when no one knows who/what Nakamoto is!

BTC  is a decentralized currency.

It is made up of codes that run on a block chain network on the computer and no government or central bank controls it.

Bitcoin is just an electronic payment system.

Every individual user of bitcoin is part of bitcoin ecosystem. So Bitcoin price is determined by its users under the free market principle of supply and demand.

Similarly, it is the same digital currency across the world no matter what the country’s physical currency.

You can convert it to nearly any local currency with no or small transaction fees receiving your payment the next business day.

On top of that, you don’t need to go to an office to do buy or sell bitcoin. Because you can just use your mobile phone to carryout bitcoin transactions.  With just a text message at a very small cost.

To cut the long story short, bitcoin is  a currency  but in a digital form. It appreciates as more people use it since it is limited in its creation.

It is decentralized and no government or central bank has control over it.

It is said only 21 Million bitcoins are to be mined and only that will be in circulation.

Bitcoin is limited to 21 Million coins in total and is expected to reach by 2140.

The current bitcoin price is around $12,000 per bitcoin as of Oct 2020