Bitcoin
What Bitcoin is, why it was created and which problems it set out to solve.
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Lessons
- 01What is Bitcoin?Bitcoin is the first cryptocurrency: digital money that runs on a public network with no central bank or company in charge. Its software caps the supply at 21 million coins and releases new ones to miners on a fixed schedule. Anyone who holds the private key to an address can send its bitcoin to anyone else, at any hour.
- 02Why was Bitcoin created?Bitcoin was created so people could pay each other online without a bank or payment company in the middle. Its pseudonymous author, Satoshi Nakamoto, published the design in October 2008, during the global financial crisis. It solved a problem that earlier digital cash had not: stopping the same money being spent twice without a central referee.
- 03What problems does Bitcoin solve?Bitcoin lets two people move value over the internet without a bank or payment company approving the transfer. Its supply follows a schedule fixed in code that no one can speed up. It leaves other problems open: the price swings hard, and a lost key means lost coins, so it suits some jobs much better than others.