What is Bitcoin?

Bitcoin is a decentralized cryptocurrency created in 2009 by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto. It supports peer-to-peer electronic cash transactions without intermediaries. Transactions are recorded on a public blockchain distributed across computers globally. New blocks are added approximately every 10 minutes through mining, which uses Proof of Work and the SHA-256 cryptographic algorithm.

Bitcoin has a fixed supply cap of 21 million coins and includes programmatic halvings every four years that reduce miner rewards. Its design addresses double-spending without trusted intermediaries and is permissionless and censorship resistant. Bitcoin ecosystem developments mentioned include Ordinals (emerged in January 2023) for NFT-like functionality via Bitcoin inscriptions, BRC-20 as an experimental fungible token standard using Ordinal inscriptions, and Bitcoin-related finance applications, including Babylon, which allows Bitcoin holders to stake BTC to help secure Proof of Stake chains.