Bitcoin Holy Grail

##### Bitcoin Holy Grail


Bitcoin

Decentralized cryptocurrency

Denominations

Plural

bitcoins

Symbol

₿ (Unicode: U+20BF ₿ BITCOIN SIGN (HTML ₿))[a]

Ticker symbol

BTC, XBT[b]

Precision

10−8

Subunits

 ​1⁄1000

millibitcoin

 ​1⁄100000000

satoshi[2]

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 (12 years ago) (2009-01-09)

Latest release

0.21.0 / 15 January 2021 (56 days ago) (2021-01-15)[3]

Development status

Active

Website

bitcoin.org

Ledger

Ledger start

3 January 2009 (12 years ago) (2009-01-03)

Timestamping scheme

Proof-of-work (partial hash inversion)

Hash function

SHA-256

Issuance schedule

Decentralized (block reward)Initially ₿50 per block, halved every 210,000 blocks[7]

Block reward

₿6.25[c]

Block time

10 minutes

Block explorer

www.blockchain.com/explorer

Circulating supply

₿18,355,100 (as of 1 May 2020[update])

Supply limit

₿21,000,000[5][d]

^ 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.

^ May 2020 to approximately 2024, halved approximately every four years

^ The supply will approach, but never reach, ₿21 million. Issuance will permanently halt c. 2140 at ₿20,999,999.9769.[6]:ch. 8

This article contains special characters. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols.

Bitcoin[a] (₿) is a cryptocurrency invented in 2008 by an unknown person or group of people using the name Satoshi Nakamoto.[13] The currency began use in 2009[14] when its implementation was released as open-source software.[6]:ch. 1

Bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency, without a central bank or single administrator, that can be sent from user to user on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network without the need for intermediaries.[7] Transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a public distributed ledger called a blockchain. Bitcoins are created as a reward for a process known as mining. They can be exchanged for other currencies, products, and services.[15] Research produced by the University of Cambridge estimated that in 2017, there were 2.9 to 5.8 million unique users using a cryptocurrency wallet, most of them using bitcoin.[16]

Bitcoin has been criticized for its use in illegal transactions, the large amount of electricity used by miners, price volatility, and thefts from exchanges.[citation needed] Some economists, including several Nobel laureates, have characterized it as a speculative bubble at various times. Bitcoin has also been used as an investment, although several regulatory agencies have issued investor alerts about bitcoin.[17][18]

Contents

1 History

1.1 Creation 1.2 2011–2012 1.3 2013–2016 1.4 2017–2019 1.5 2020–present

2 Design

2.1 Units and divisibility 2.2 Blockchain

2.3 Transactions

2.3.1 Transaction fees

2.4 Ownership

2.5 Mining

2.5.1 Supply 2.5.2 Pooled mining

2.6 Wallets

2.6.1 Physical wallets

2.7 Implementations

2.7.1 Forks

2.8 Decentralization

2.8.1 Trend towards centralization

2.9 Privacy 2.10 Fungibility 2.11 Scalability

3 Ideology

3.1 Austrian economics roots 3.2 Anarchism and libertarianism

4 Economics

4.1 Acceptance by merchants 4.2 Financial institutions 4.3 As an investment 4.4 Venture capital 4.5 Price and volatility

5 Legal status, tax and regulation

5.1 Regulatory warnings 5.2 Price manipulation investigation

6 Criticism

6.1 As a speculative bubble 6.2 Energy consumption 6.3 Carbon footprint 6.4 Ponzi scheme and pyramid scheme concerns 6.5 Security issues 6.6 Use in illegal transactions 6.7 Other critical opinions

7 Implementation in software

7.1 Features 7.2 Development

8 In popular culture

8.1 Literature 8.2 Film 8.3 …

Collection: Encryption

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