What is bitcoin?

Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer network-based, experimental property transfer and verification system without any central authority.

The bitcoin network's initial application and principal innovation is a decentralized digital currency whose account unit is bitcoin.

Bitcoin operates with software and a protocol that allows users to and issue the bitcoins and handle transactions. It also allows the interoperability of the software and services that use it, as a free protocol (open source code). As a currency bitcoin is both a value store and a payment intermediary.

Bitcoin is created for self-regulation. Restricted inflation of Bitcoin is distributed by computing power across the network and will be restricted to 21 million coins up to an eighth decimal point.

Possession of bitcoins is materialized by a sequence of numbers and letters that constitute a virtual key allowing the bitcoins associated with it to be spent on the ledger. A person can hold multiple keys collected in a "Bitcoin Wallet," a "keychain" web, software or hardware that allows access to the network for transactions to take place.

The wallet helps you to show the Bitcoin balance and the public keys associated with the wallet. It also includes the private keys associated with certain public keys (often encrypted). These private keys must be kept secret, as their holder can spend on the registry the bitcoins associated with them.

To have bitcoins on an account, you must either be given bitcoins, for example in exchange for a product or service, or you must go through an exchange network that transforms fiat currencies into bitcoins, or you must have won them by taking part in collective currency regulation.

Bitcoin source codes have been published under an open-source MIT license. Bitcoin's founder, Satoshi Nakamoto, published bitcoin's whitepaper online in 2009. His identity remains anonymous today.