What is bitcoin (BTC)?

Learn the first concepts about bitcoin and explain them to friends and family.

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Written by belo
Updated over a week ago

Bitcoin (BTC) is the first and most popular cryptocurrency. Its creation dates to 2008, when an individual or group of individuals under the pseudonym "Satoshi Nakamoto" unveiled it.

What are its main characteristics?

  • The amount of bitcoin is finite. Only 21,000,000 will ever exist. Its issuance rate is reduced over time, which ensures its scarcity. It is an anti-inflationary currency by essence. Its supply will never grow beyond the initial amount established.

  • Each bitcoin is divisible into 100,000,000 units. Each fraction is called "satoshi", or "sat" after its enigmatic creator.

  • You can take it with you wherever you go. Bitcoin is a highly portable currency: it can be stored at no cost in digital wallets, and it's much more practical and safer than carrying cash.

  • Anyone can access bitcoin. Bitcoin is available 24/7 from anywhere in the world, because its functioning does not depend on any government or entity. Its nature is permissionless and it can neither be censored nor confiscated.

  • It is decentralized. Bitcoin has made it possible for the first time to achieve a previously unthinkable goal: a currency that no longer needs an issuing and controlling authority, with its integrity based on a distributed ledger, known as the Blockchain, where transactions are public and verifiable by each of the parties involved

  • Information stored on the blockchain cannot be modified or erased without permission from its owners, making this technology a powerful tool for proving authenticity and guaranteeing property rights.

  • Bitcoin is extremely secure. Since the network is constituted by thousands of nodes, its functioning does not depend on only one of them. It thus becomes resistant to attacks and censorship attempts. In its more than 12 years of history, Bitcoin has never been successfully hacked.

  • Bitcoin enables you to be your own bank. You no longer depend on a financial institution to hold your savings. There are no surprises when using bitcoin: Your password access is the only way to assure that your money is yours and no one else can access it but you.

Nowadays, Bitcoin continues to expand in terms of number of users, with a lively community in charge of its development and growing interest from institutional investors.

In a global context where inflation is once again in the spotlight even in countries where it was once a forgotten topic, bitcoin offers a disruptive alternative: a currency beyond the power of any government, with a tight and predictable monetary policy, extremely secure and freely accessible anywhere in the world.

In order to find out how to buy bitcoin in belo, click here.


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