Bitcoin

Bitcoin

Plural bitcoins
Symbol ₿[a]
Ticker symbol BTC, XBT[b]
Subunits
 ​1⁄1000 millibitcoin
 ​1⁄100000000 satoshi[2]
Coins Unspent outputs of transactions (in multiples of a satoshi)[3]:ch. 5
Development
Original author(s) Satoshi Nakamoto
White paper "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System"[4]
Implementation(s) Bitcoin Core
Initial release 0.1.0 / 9 January 2009 (9 years ago)
Latest release 0.16.0 / 26 February 2018 (3 months ago)
Website bitcoin.org
Ledger
Ledger start 3 January 2009 (9 years ago)
Timestamping scheme Proof-of-work (partial hash inversion)
Hash function SHA-256
Issuance Decentralized (block reward)[6][7]
Block reward ₿12.5[c]
Block time 10 minutes
Block explorer blockchain.info
Circulating supply ₿16,858,762 (as of 11 February 2018)
Supply limit ₿21,000,000 [5]
The symbol was encoded in Unicode version 10.0 at position U+20BF ₿ BITCOIN SIGN in the Currency Symbols block in June 2017.[1]
Compatible with ISO 4217.
July 2016 to approximately June 2020, halved approximately every four years
This article contains special characters. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols.
Bitcoin (₿) is the world's first cryptocurrency, a form of electronic cash sent peer-to-peer without the need for a financial intermediary.[8]:3[9] It is the first decentralized digital currency: the system works without a central bank or single administrator. Bitcoins are sent from user to user on the peer-to-peer Bitcoin network directly, without the need for intermediaries.:4,5 These transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a public distributed ledger called a blockchain. Bitcoin was invented by an unknown person or group of people using the name Satoshi Nakamoto[11] and released as open-source software in 2009.

Bitcoins are created as a reward for a process known as mining. They can be exchanged for other currencies,[13] products, and services. Research produced by the University of Cambridge estimates that in 2017, there were 2.9 to 5.8 million unique users using a cryptocurrency wallet, most of them using bitcoin

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