What is Bitcoin?

Bitcoin is a decentralized cryptocurrency created in 2009 by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto. It enables peer-to-peer electronic cash transactions without intermediaries and records transactions on a public blockchain secured by Proof of Work mining using the SHA-256 cryptographic algorithm. Transactions are grouped into blocks that are added approximately every 10 minutes through mining, where computers compete to solve mathematical puzzles.

Bitcoin has a fixed supply cap of 21 million coins, with programmatic halvings every four years that reduce miner rewards. Its governance model is decentralized and does not describe an issuer-led decision process in the provided text. Bitcoin value is described as coming from solving the double-spending problem without trusted intermediaries, aiming for censorship resistance and permissionless access. The ecosystem described includes Ordinals for NFT-like functionality on Bitcoin and BRC-20 tokens using ordinal inscriptions, and Babylon, which allows Bitcoin holders to stake BTC to help secure Proof of Stake chains.