Bitcoin (abbreviation: BTC; sign: ₿) is a decentralized digital currency that can be

transferred on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network. Bitcoin transactions are verified by

network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a publicly distributed ledger
called a blockchain. The cryptocurrency was invented in 2008 by an unknown person
or group of people using the name Satoshi Nakamoto. The currency began to use in
2009 when its implementation was released as open-source software.: ch. 1 The word
bitcoin was defined in a white paper published on 31 October 2008. It is a compound
of the words bit and coin. No uniform convention for bitcoin capitalization exists;
some sources use Bitcoin, capitalized, to refer to the technology and network, and
bitcoin, lowercase, for the unit of account. The Wall Street Journal, The Chronicle of
Higher Education, and the Oxford English Dictionary advocate the use of lowercase
bitcoin in all cases.
 
The legality of bitcoin varies by region. Nine countries have fully banned bitcoin use,
while a further fifteen have implicitly banned it. A few governments have used bitcoin
in some capacity. El Salvador has adopted Bitcoin as a legal tender, although its use
by merchants remains low. Ukraine has accepted cryptocurrency donations to fund
the resistance to the 2022 Russian invasion. Iran has used bitcoin to bypass
sanctions.
 
Bitcoin has been described as an economic bubble by at least eight Nobel Memorial
Prize in Economic Sciences recipients.
 
== Design ==
 
=== Units and divisibility ===
 
The unit of account of the bitcoin system is the bitcoin. Currency codes for
representing bitcoin are BTC and XBT.: 2 Its Unicode character is ₿. One bitcoin is
divisible to eight decimal places.: ch. 5 Units for smaller amounts of bitcoin are the
millibitcoin (mBTC), equal to 1⁄1000 bitcoin, and the satoshi (sat), which is the
smallest possible division, and named in homage to bitcoin's creator, representing
1⁄100000000 (one hundred millionth) bitcoin. 100,000 satoshis are one mBTC.
 
=== Blockchain ===
 
The bitcoin blockchain is a public ledger that records bitcoin transactions. It is
implemented as a chain of blocks, each block containing a cryptographic hash of the
previous block up to the genesis block in the chain. A network of communicating
nodes running bitcoin software maintains the blockchain.: 215–219 Transactions of
the form payer X sends Y bitcoins to payee Z and are broadcast to this network using
readily available software applications.
 
Network nodes can validate transactions, add them to their copy of the ledger, and
then broadcast these ledger additions to other nodes. To achieve independent
verification of the chain of ownership, each network node stores its copy of the
blockchain. At varying intervals of time averaging every 10 minutes, a new group of
accepted transactions called a block is created, added to the blockchain, and quickly
published to all nodes, without requiring central oversight. This allows bitcoin
software to determine when a particular bitcoin was spent, which is needed to
prevent double-spending. A conventional ledger records the transfers of actual bills
or promissory notes that exist apart from it, but the blockchain is the only place
where bitcoins can be said to exist in the form of unspent outputs of transactions.:
ch. 5 Individual blocks, public addresses, and transactions within blocks can be
examined using a blockchain explorer.
 
=== Transactions ===
 
Transactions are defined using a Forth-like scripting language.: ch. 5 Transactions
consist of one or more inputs and one or more outputs. When a user sends bitcoins,
the user designates each address and the amount of bitcoin being sent to that
address in an output. To prevent double spending, each input must refer to a
previous unspent output in the blockchain. The use of multiple inputs corresponds to
the use of multiple coins in a cash transaction. Since transactions can have multiple
outputs, users can send bitcoins to multiple recipients in one transaction. As in a cash
transaction, the sum of inputs (coins used to pay) can exceed the intended sum of
payments. In such a case, an additional output is used, returning the change to the
payer. Any input satoshis not accounted for in the transaction outputs become the
transaction fee. Though transaction fees are optional, miners can choose which
transactions to process and prioritize those that pay higher fees. Miners may choose
transactions based on the fee paid relative to their storage size, not the absolute
amount of money paid as a fee. These fees are generally measured in satoshis per
byte (sat/b). The size of transactions is dependent on the number of inputs used to
create the transaction and the number of outputs.: ch. 8 The blocks in the blockchain
were originally limited to 32 megabytes in size. The block size limit of one megabyte
was introduced by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2010. Eventually, the block size limit of one
megabyte created problems for transaction processing, such as increasing
transaction fees and delayed processing of transactions. Andreas Antonopoulos has
stated Lightning Network is a potential scaling solution and referred to lightning as a
second-layer routing network.: ch. 8
 
=== Ownership ===
 
In the blockchain, bitcoins are registered to bitcoin addresses. Creating a bitcoin
address requires nothing more than picking a random valid private key and
computing the corresponding bitcoin address. This computation can be done in a
split second. But the reverse, computing the private key of a given bitcoin address, is
practically unfeasible.: ch. 4 Users can tell others or make public a bitcoin address
without compromising its corresponding private key. Moreover, the number of valid
private keys is so vast that it is extremely unlikely someone will compute a key pair
that is already in use and has funds. The vast number of valid private keys makes it
unfeasible that brute force could be used to compromise a private key. To be able to
spend their bitcoins, the owner must know the corresponding private key and
digitally sign the transaction. The network verifies the signature using the public key;
the private key is never revealed.: ch. 5 If the private key is lost, the bitcoin network
will not recognize any other evidence of ownership; the coins are then unusable, and
effectively lost. For example, in 2013 one user claimed to have lost ₿7,500, worth $7.5
million at the time, when he accidentally discarded a hard drive containing his private
key. About 20% of all bitcoins are believed to be lost—they would have had a market
value of about $20 billion at July 2018 prices. To ensure the security of bitcoins, the
private key must be kept secret.: ch. 10 If the private key is revealed to a third party,
e.g. through a data breach, the third party can use it to steal any associated bitcoins.
As of December 2017, around ₿980,000 have been stolen from cryptocurrency
exchanges. Regarding ownership distribution, as of 16 March 2018, 0.5% of bitcoin
wallets own 87% of all bitcoins ever mined.
 
== Mining ==
 
Mining is a record-keeping service done through the use of computer processing
power. Miners keep the blockchain consistent, complete, and unalterable by
repeatedly grouping newly broadcast transactions into a block, which is then
broadcast to the network and verified by recipient nodes. Each block contains an
SHA-256 cryptographic hash of the previous block, thus linking it to the previous
block and giving the blockchain its name.: ch. 7 To be accepted by the rest of the
network, a new block must contain a proof-of-work (PoW). The PoW requires miners
to find a number called a nonce (a number used just once), such that when the block
content is hashed along with the nonce, the result is numerically smaller than the
network's difficulty target.: ch. 8 This proof is easy for any node in the network to
verify, but extremely time-consuming to generate, as for a secure cryptographic
hash, miners must try many different nonce values (usually the sequence of tested
values is the ascending natural numbers: 0, 1, 2, 3, ...) before a result happens to be
less than the difficulty target. Because the difficulty target is extremely small
compared to a typical SHA-256 hash, block hashes have many leading zeros: ch. 8 as
can be seen in this example block hash:
 
0000000000000000000590fc0f3eba193a278534220b2b37e9849e1a770ca959By
adjusting this difficulty target, the amount of work needed to generate a block can
be changed. Every 2,016 blocks (approximately 14 days given roughly 10 minutes per
block), nodes deterministically adjust the difficulty target based on the recent rate of
block generation, to keep the average time between new blocks at ten minutes. In
this way, the system automatically adapts to the total amount of mining power on
the network.: ch. 8 As of April 2022, it takes on average 122 sextillions (122 thousand
billion billion) attempts to generate a block hash smaller than the difficulty target.
Computations of this magnitude are extremely expensive and utilize specialized
hardware. The proof-of-work system, alongside the chaining of blocks, makes
modifications of the blockchain extremely hard, as an attacker must modify all
subsequent blocks for the modifications of one block to be accepted. As new blocks
are mined all the time, the difficulty of modifying a block increases as time passes
and the number of subsequent blocks (also called confirmations of the given block)
increases. Computing power is often bundled together by a Mining pool to reduce
variance in miner income. Individual mining rigs often have to wait for long periods
to confirm a block of transactions and receive payment. In a pool, all participating
miners get paid every time a participating server solves a block. This payment
depends on the amount of work an individual miner contributed to help find that
block.
 
== Supply ==
 
The successful miner finding the new block is allowed by the rest of the network to
collect for themselves all transaction fees from transactions they included in the
block, as well as a predetermined reward of newly created bitcoins. As of 11 May
2020, this reward is currently ₿6.25 in newly created bitcoins per block. To claim this
reward, a special transaction called a coinbase is included in the block, with the miner
as the payee.: ch. 8 All bitcoins in existence have been created through this type of
transaction. The bitcoin protocol specifies that the reward for adding a block will be
reduced by half every 210,000 blocks (approximately every four years). Eventually, the
reward will round down to zero, and the limit of ₿21 million is expected to be
reached c. 2140 at current rates; the record keeping will then be rewarded by
transaction fees only.
 
== Decentralization ==
 
Bitcoin is decentralized thus:
 
Bitcoin does not have a central authority.
 
The bitcoin network is peer-to-peer, without central servers.
 
The network also has no central storage; the bitcoin ledger is distributed.
 
The ledger is public; anybody can store it on a computer.: ch. 1
 
There is no single administrator; the ledger is maintained by a network of equally
privileged miners.: ch. 1
 
Anyone can become a miner.: ch. 1
 
The additions to the ledger are maintained through competition. Until a new block is
added to the ledger, it is not known which miner will create the block.: ch. 1
 
The issuance of bitcoins is decentralized. They are issued as a reward for the creation
of a new block.
 
Anybody can create a new bitcoin address (a bitcoin counterpart of a bank account)
without needing any approval.: ch. 1
 
Anybody can send a transaction to the network without needing any approval; the
network merely confirms that the transaction is legitimate.: 32 Conversely,
researchers have pointed out a "trend towards centralization". Although bitcoin can
be sent directly from user to user, in practice intermediaries are widely used.: 220–
222 Bitcoin miners join large mining pools to minimize the variance of their income.:
215, 219–222 : 3 Because transactions on the network are confirmed by miners,
decentralization of the network requires that no single miner or mining pool obtains
51% of the hashing power, which would allow them to double-spend coins, prevent
certain transactions from being verified and prevent other miners from earning
income. As of 201,3, just six mining pools controlled 75% of overall bitcoin hashing
power. In 2014 mining pool Ghash.io obtained 51% hashing power which raised
significant controversies about the safety of the network. The pool has voluntarily
capped its hashing power at 39.99% and requested other pools to act responsibly for
the benefit of the whole network. Around the year 2017, over 70% of the hashing
power and 90% of transactions were operating from Chin. According to researchers,
other parts of the ecosystem are also "controlled by a small set of entities", notably
the maintenance of the client software, online wallets, and simplified payment
verification (SPV) clients.
 
== Privacy and fungibility ==
 
Bitcoin is pseudonymous, meaning that funds are not tied to real-world entities but
rather to bitcoin addresses. Owners of bitcoin addresses are not explicitly identified,
but all transactions on the blockchain are public. In addition, transactions can be
linked to individuals and companies through "idioms of use" (e.g., transactions that
spend coins from multiple inputs indicate that the inputs may have a common
owner) and corroborating public transaction data with known information on owners
of certain addresses. Additionally, bitcoin exchanges, where bitcoins are traded for
traditional currencies, may be required by law to collect personal information. To
heighten financial privacy, a new bitcoin address can be generated for each
transaction.Wallets and similar software technically handle all bitcoins as equivalent,
establishing the basic level of fungibility. Researchers have pointed out that the
history of each bitcoin is registered and publicly available in the blockchain ledger,
and that some users may refuse to accept bitcoins coming from controversial
transactions, which would harm bitcoin's fungibility. For example, in 2012, Mt. Gox
froze the accounts of users who deposited bitcoins that were known to have just
been stolen.
 
== Wallets ==
 
A wallet stores the information necessary to transact bitcoins. While wallets are often
described as a place to hold or store bitcoins, due to the nature of the system,
bitcoins are inseparable from the blockchain transaction ledger. A wallet is more
correctly defined as something that "stores the digital credentials for your bitcoin
holdings" and allows one to access (and spend) them. : ch. 1, glossary Bitcoin uses
public-key cryptography, in which two cryptographic keys, one public and one
private, are generated. At its most basic, a wallet is a collection of these keys.
 
=== Software wallets ===
 
The first wallet program, simply named Bitcoin, and sometimes referred to as the
Satoshi client, was released in 2009 by Satoshi Nakamoto as open-source software. In
version 0.5 the client moved from the wxWidgets user interface toolkit to Qt, and the
whole bundle was referred to as Bitcoin-Qt. After the release of version 0.9, the
software bundle was renamed Bitcoin Core to distinguish itself from the underlying
network. Bitcoin Core is, perhaps, the best-known implementation or client.
Alternative clients (forks of Bitcoin Core) exist, such as Bitcoin XT, Bitcoin Unlimited,
and Parity Bitcoin. There are several modes in which wallets can operate. They have
an inverse relationship between trustlessness and computational requirements.
 
Full clients verify transactions directly by downloading a full copy of the blockchain
(over 150 GB as of January 2018). They are the most secure and reliable way of using
the network, as trust in external parties is not required. Full clients check the validity
of mined blocks, preventing them from transacting on a chain that breaks or alters
network rules.: ch. 1 Because of its size and complexity, downloading and verifying
the entire blockchain is not suitable for all computing devices.
 
Lightweight clients consult full nodes to send and receive transactions without
requiring a local copy of the entire blockchain (see simplified payment verification –
SPV). This makes lightweight clients much faster to set up and allows them to be
used on low-power, low-bandwidth devices such as smartphones. When using a
lightweight wallet, however, the user must trust full nodes, as it can report faulty
values back to the user. Lightweight clients follow the longest blockchain and do not
ensure it is valid, requiring trust in full nodes. Third-party internet services called
online wallets or web wallets offer similar functionality but may be easier to use. In
this case, credentials to access funds are stored with the online wallet provider rather
than on the user's hardware. As a result, the user must have complete trust in the
online wallet provider. A malicious provider or a breach in server security may cause
entrusted bitcoins to be stolen. An example of such a security breach occurred with
Mt. Gox in 2011.
 
=== Cold storage ===
 
Wallet software is targeted by hackers because of the lucrative potential for stealing
bitcoins. A technique called "cold storage" keeps private keys out of reach of hackers;
this is accomplished by keeping private keys offline at all times: ch. 4 by generating
them on a device that is not connected to the internet.: 39 The credentials necessary
to spend bitcoins can be stored offline in several different ways, from specialized
hardware wallets to simple paper printouts of the private key.: ch. 10
 
=== Hardware wallets ===
 
A hardware wallet is a computer peripheral that signs transactions as requested by
the user. These devices store private keys and carry out signing and encryption
internally, and do not share any sensitive information with the host computer except
already signed (and thus unalterable) transactions. Because hardware wallets never
expose their private keys, even computers that may be compromised by malware do
not have a vector to access or steal them.: 42–45 The user sets a passcode when
setting up a hardware wallet. As hardware wallets are tamper-resistant, ch. 10 a
passcode will be needed to extract any money.
 
=== Paper wallets ===
 
A paper wallet is created with a keypair generated on a computer with no internet
connection; the private key is written or printed onto the paper and then erased from
the computer.: ch. 4 The paper wallet can then be stored in a safe physical location
for later retrieval.: 39 Physical wallets can also take the form of metal token coins with
a private key accessible under a security hologram in a recess struck on the reverse
side.: 38 The security hologram self-destructs when removed from the token,
showing that the private key has been accessed. Originally, these tokens were struck
in brass and other base metals but later used precious metals as bitcoin grew in
value and popularity.: 80 Coins with a stored face value as high as ₿1,000 have been
struck in gold.: 102–104 The British Museum's coin collection includes four
specimens from the earliest series: 83 of funded bitcoin tokens; one is currently on
display in the museum's money gallery. In 2013, a Utah manufacturer of these tokens
was ordered by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) to register as a
money services business before producing any more funded bitcoin tokens.: 80
 
== History ==
 
=== Creation ===
 
The domain name bitcoin.org was registered on 18 August 2008. On 31 October
2008, a link to a paper authored by Satoshi Nakamoto titled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer
Electronic Cash System was posted to a cryptography mailing list. Nakamoto
implemented the bitcoin software as open-source code and released it in January
2009. Nakamoto's identity remains unknown. On 3 January 2009, the bitcoin network
was created when Nakamoto mined the starting block of the chain, known as the
genesis block. Embedded in the coinbase of this block was the text "The Times
03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks". This note references a
headline published by The Times and has been interpreted as both a timestamp and
a comment on the instability caused by fractional-reserve banking.: 18 The receiver
of the first bitcoin transaction was Hal Finney, who had created the first reusable
proof-of-work system (RPoW) in 2004. Finney downloaded the bitcoin software on its
release date, and on 12 January 2009 received ten bitcoins from Nakamoto. Other
early cypherpunk supporters were creators of bitcoin predecessors: Wei Dai, creator
of b-money, and Nick Szabo, creator of bit gold. In 2010, the first known commercial
transaction using bitcoin occurred when programmer Laszlo Hanyecz bought two
Papa John's pizzas for ₿10,000 from Jeremy Sturdivant. Blockchain analysts estimate
that Nakamoto had mined about one million bitcoins before disappearing in 2010
when he handed the network alert key and control of the code repository over to
Gavin Andresen. Andresen later became the lead developer at the Bitcoin
Foundation. Andresen then sought to decentralize control. This left opportunity for
controversy to develop over the future development path of bitcoin, in contrast to
the perceived authority of Nakamoto's contributions.
 
=== 2011–2012 ===
 
After early "proof-of-concept" transactions, the first major users of bitcoin were black
markets, such as Silk Road. During its 30 months of existence, beginning in February
2011, Silk Road exclusively accepted bitcoins as payment, transacting ₿9.9 million,
worth about $214 million.: 222 In 2011, the price started at $0.30 per bitcoin, growing
to $5.27 for the year. The price rose to $31.50 on 8 June. Within a month, the price
fell to $11.00. The next month it fell to $7.80, and in another month to $4.77.In 2012,
bitcoin prices started at $5.27, growing to $13.30 for the year. By 9 January the price
had risen to $7.38 but then crashed by 49% to $3.80 over the next 16 days. The price
then rose to $16.41 on 17 August but fell by 57% to $7.10 over the next three days.
The Bitcoin Foundation was founded in September 2012 to promote bitcoin's
development and uptake. On 1 November 2011, the reference implementation
Bitcoin-Qt version 0.5.0 was released. It introduced a front end that used the Qt user
interface toolkit. The software previously used Berkeley DB for database
management. Developers switched to LevelDB in release 0.8 to reduce blockchain
synchronization time. The update to this release resulted in a minor blockchain fork
on 11 March 2013. The fork was resolved shortly afterward. Seeding nodes through
IRC was discontinued in version 0.8.2. From version 0.9.0 the software was renamed
to Bitcoin Core. Transaction fees were reduced again by a factor of ten as a means to
encourage microtransactions. Although Bitcoin Core does not use OpenSSL for the
operation of the network, the software did use OpenSSL for remote procedure calls.
Version 0.9.1 was released to remove the network's vulnerability to the Heartbleed
bug.
 
=== 2013–2016 ===
 
In 2013, prices started at $13.30 rising to $770 by 1 January 2014. In March 2013 the
blockchain temporarily split into two independent chains with different rules due to a
bug in version 0.8 of the bitcoin software. The two blockchains operated
simultaneously for six hours, each with its version of the transaction history from the
moment of the split. Normal operation was restored when the majority of the
network downgraded to version 0.7 of the bitcoin software, selecting the backward-
compatible version of the blockchain. As a result, this blockchain became the longest
chain and could be accepted by all participants, regardless of their bitcoin software
version. During the split, the Mt. Gox exchange briefly halted bitcoin deposits and the
price dropped by 23% to $37 before recovering to the previous level of
approximately $48 in the following hours. The US Financial Crimes Enforcement
Network (FinCEN) established regulatory guidelines for "decentralized virtual
currencies" such as bitcoin, classifying American bitcoin miners who sell their
generated bitcoins as Money Service Businesses (MSBs), that are subject to
registration or other legal obligations. In April, exchanges BitInstant and Mt. Gox
experienced processing delays due to insufficient capacity resulting in the bitcoin
price dropping from $266 to $76 before returning to $160 within six hours. The
bitcoin price rose to $259 on 10 April, but then crashed by 83% to $45 over the next
three days. On 15 May 2013, US authorities seized accounts associated with Mt. Gox
after discovering it had not registered as a money transmitter with FinCEN in the US.
On 23 June 2013, the US Drug Enforcement Administration listed ₿11.02 as a seized
asset in a United States Department of Justice seizure notice under 21 U.S.C. § 881.
This marked the first time a government agency had seized bitcoin. The FBI seized
about ₿30,000 in October 2013 from the dark web website Silk Road, following the
arrest of Ross William Ulbricht. These bitcoins were sold at blind auction by the
United States Marshals Service to venture capital investor Tim Draper. Bitcoin's price
rose to $755 on 19 November and crashed by 50% to $378 the same day. On 30
November 2013, the price reached $1,163 before starting a long-term crash,
declining by 87% to $152 in January 2015. On 5 December 2013, the People's Bank of
China prohibited Chinese financial institutions from using bitcoin. After the
announcement, the value of bitcoin dropped, and Baidu no longer accepted bitcoins
for certain services. Buying real-world goods with any virtual currency had been
illegal in China since at least 2009. In 2014, prices started at $770 and fell to $314 for
the year. On 30 July 2014, the Wikimedia Foundation started accepting donations of
bitcoin. In 2015, prices started at $314 and rose to $434 for the year. In 2016, prices
rose and climbed up to $998 by 1 January 2017. Release 0.10 of the software was
made public on 16 February 2015. It introduced a consensus library that gave
programmers easy access to the rules governing consensus on the network. In
version, 0.11.2 developers added a new feature that allowed transactions to be made
unspendable until a specific time in the future. Bitcoin Core 0.12.1 was released on 15
April 2016 and enabled multiple soft forks to occur concurrently. Around 100
contributors worked on Bitcoin Core 0.13.0 which was released on 23 August 2016.
 
In July 2016, the CheckSequenceVerify soft fork was activated. In August 2016, the
Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange platform was hacked in the second-largest breach
of a Bitcoin exchange platform up to that time, and ₿119,756, worth about $72
million at the time, was stolen. In October 2016, Bitcoin Core's 0.13.1 release featured
the "Segwit" soft fork that included a scaling improvement aiming to optimize the
bitcoin block size. The patch was originally finalized in April, and 35 developers were
engaged to deploy it. This release featured Segregated Witness (SegWit) which
aimed to place downward pressure on transaction fees as well as increase the
maximum transaction capacity of the network. The 0.13.1 release endured extensive
testing and research leading to some delays in its release date. SegWit prevents
various forms of transaction malleability.
 
=== 2017–2019 ===
 
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. On 15 July 2017, the controversial Segregated Witness [SegWit]
software upgrade was approved ("locked-in"). Segwit was intended to support the
Lightning Network as well as improve scalability. SegWit was subsequently activated
on the network on 24 August 2017. The bitcoin price rose almost 50% in the week
following SegWit's approval. On 21 July 2017, bitcoin was trading at $2,748, up 52%
from 14 July 2017's $1,835. Supporters of large blocks who were dissatisfied with the
activation of SegWit forked the software on 1 August 2017 to create Bitcoin Cash,
becoming one of many forks of bitcoin such as Bitcoin Gold. Prices started at $998 in
2017 and rose to $13,412.44 on 1 January 2018, after reaching an all-time high of
$19,783.06 on 17 December 2017. China banned trading in bitcoin, with the first
steps taken in September 2017, and a complete ban that started on 1 February 2018.
Bitcoin prices then fell from $9,052 to $6,914 on 5 February 2018. The percentage of
bitcoin trading in the Chinese renminbi fell from over 90% in September 2017 to less
than 1% in June 2018.Throughout the rest of the first half of 2018, bitcoin's price
fluctuated between $11,480 and $5,848. On 1 July 2018, bitcoin's price was $6,343.
The price on 1 January 2019 was $3,747, down 72% from 2018 and down 81% since
the all-time high. In September 2018, an anonymous party discovered and reported
an invalid-block denial-of-server vulnerability to developers of Bitcoin Core, Bitcoin
ABC, and Bitcoin Unlimited. Further analysis by bitcoin developers showed the issue
could also allow the creation of blocks violating the 21 million coin limit CVE-2018-
17144 was assigned and the issue was resolved. Bitcoin prices were negatively
affected by several hacks or thefts from cryptocurrency exchanges, including thefts
from Coincheck in January 2018, Bithumb in June, and Bancor in July. For the first six
months of 2018, $761 million worth of cryptocurrencies was reported stolen from
exchanges. Bitcoin's price was affected even though other cryptocurrencies were
stolen at Coinrail and Bancor as investors worried about the security of
cryptocurrency exchanges. In September 2019 the Intercontinental Exchange (the
owner of the NYSE) began trading of bitcoin futures on its exchange called Bakkt.
Bakkt also announced that it would launch options on bitcoin in December 2019. In
December 2019, YouTube removed bitcoin and cryptocurrency videos, but later
restored the content after judging they had "made the wrong call".In February 2019,
Canadian cryptocurrency exchange Quadriga Fintech Solutions failed with
approximately $200 million missing. By June 2019 the price had recovered to
$13,000.
 
=== 2020–present ===
 
On 13 March 2020, bitcoin fell below $4,000 during a broad market selloff, after
trading above $10,000 in February 2020. On 11 March 2020, 281,000 bitcoins were
sold, held by owners for only thirty days. This compared to ₿4,131 that had laid
dormant for a year or more, indicating that the vast majority of the bitcoin volatility
on that day was from recent buyers. During the week of 11 March 2020,
cryptocurrency exchange Kraken experienced an 83% increase in the number of
account signups over the week of bitcoin's price collapse, a result of buyers looking
to capitalize on the low price. These events were attributed to the onset of the
COVID-19 pandemic.
 
In August 2020, MicroStrategy invested $250 million in bitcoin as a treasury reserve
asset. In October 2020, Square, Inc. placed approximately 1% of its total assets ($50
million) in bitcoin. In November 2020, PayPal announced that US users could buy,
hold, or sell bitcoin. On 30 November 2020, the bitcoin value reached a new all-time
high of $19,860, topping the previous high of December 2017. Alexander Vinnthe ik,
founder of BTC-e, was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison for money
laundering in France while refusing to testify during his trial. In December 2020,
Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company announced a bitcoin purchase of
US$100 million or roughly 0.04% of its general investment account. On 19 January
2021, Elon Musk placed the handle #Bitcoin in his Twitter profile, tweeting "In
retrospect, it was inevitable", which caused the price to briefly rise about $5,000 in an
hour to $37,299. On 25 January 2021, Microstrategy announced that it continued to
buy bitcoin and as of the same date it had holdings of ₿70,784 worth $2.38 billion.
On 8 February 2021 Tesla's announcement of a bitcoin purchase of US$1.5 billion
and the plan to start accepting bitcoin as payment for vehicles, pushed the bitcoin
price to $44,141. On 18 February 2021, Elon Musk stated that "owning bitcoin was
only a little better than holding conventional cash, but that the slight difference
made it a better asset to hold". After 49 days of accepting the digital currency, Tesla
reversed course on 12 May 2021, saying they would no longer take bitcoin due to
concerns that "mining" the cryptocurrency was contributing to the consumption of
fossil fuels and climate change. The decision resulted in the price of bitcoin dropping
around 12% on 13 May. During a July bitcoin conference, Musk suggested Tesla
could help bitcoin miners switch to renewable energy in the future and also stated at
the same conference that if bitcoin mining reaches, and trends above 50 percent
renewable energy usage, "Tesla would resume accepting bitcoin." The bitcoin price
rose after this announcement. In June 2021, the Taproot network software upgrade
was approved, adding support for Schnorr signatures, and improved functionality of
Smart contracts and Lightning Network. The upgrade was activated in November. In
September 2021, Bitcoin in El Salvador became legal tender, alongside the US dollar.
On 16 October 2021, the SEC approved the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF, a cash-
settled futures exchange-traded fund (ETF). The first bitcoin ETF in the United States
gained 5% on its first trading day on 19 October 2021. On 25 March 2022, Pavel
Zavalny stated that Russia might accept bitcoin for payment for oil and gas exports,
in response to sanctions stemming from the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. On 27
April 2022 Central African Republic adopted bitcoin as legal tender alongside the
CFA franc. On May 10, 2022, the bitcoin price fell to $31,324, as a result of a collapse
of a UST stablecoin experiment named Terra, with bitcoin down more than 50% since
the November 2021 high. By June 13, 2022, the Celsius Network (a decentralized
finance loan company) halted withdrawals and resulting in the bitcoin price falling
below $20,000.In May 2022, following a vote by Wikipedia editors the previous
month, the Wikimedia Foundation announced it would stop accepting donations in
bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies—eight years after it had first started taking
contributions in bitcoin.
 
== Associated ideologies ==
 
Satoshi Nakamoto stated in an essay accompanying bitcoin's code: "The root
problem with conventional currencies is all the trust that's required to make it work.
The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat
currencies is full of breaches of that trust."
 
=== Austrian economics roots ===
 
According to the European Central Bank, the decentralization of money offered by
bitcoin has its theoretical roots in the Austrian school of economics, especially with
Friedrich von Hayek in his book Denationalisation of Money: The Argument Refined,
in which Hayek advocates a comply completely market in the production, distribute,
on and management of money to end the monopoly of central banks.: 22
 
=== Anarchism and libertarianism ===
 
According to The New York Times, libertarians and anarchists were attracted to the
philosophical idea behind bitcoin. Early bitcoin supporter Roger Ver said: "At first,
almost everyone who got involved did so for philosophical reasons. We saw bitcoin
as a great idea, as a way to separate money from the state." The Economist describes
bitcoin as "a techno-anarchist project to create an online version of cash, a way for
people to transact without the possibility of interference from malicious
governments or banks". Economist Paul Krugman argues that cryptocurrencies like
bitcoin are "something of a cult" based on "paranoid fantasies" of government
power.
 
Nigel Dodd argues in The Social Life of Bitcoin that the essence of the bitcoin
ideology is to remove money from social, as well as governmental, control. Dodd
quotes a YouTube video, with Roger Ver, Jeff Berwick, Charlie Shrem, Andreas
Antonopoulos, Gavin Wood, Trace Meyer, and other proponents of bitcoin reading
The Declaration of Bitcoin's Independence. The declaration includes a message of
crypto-anarchism with the words: "Bitcoin is inherently anti-establishment, anti-
system, and anti-state. Bitcoin undermines governments and disrupts institutions
because bitcoin is fundamentally humanitarian."David Golumbia says that the ideas
influencing bitcoin advocates emerge from right-wing extremist movements such as
the Liberty Lobby and the John Birch Society and their anti-Central Bank rhetoric, or,
more recently, Ron Paul and Tea Party-style libertarianism. Steve Bannon, who owns
a "good stake" in bitcoin, considers it to be "disruptive populism. It takes control
back from central authorities. It's revolutionary."A 2014 study of Google Trends data
found correlations between bitcoin-related searches and ones related to computer
programming and illegal activity, but not libertarianism or investment topics.
 
== Economics ==
 
Bitcoin is a digital asset designed to work in peer-to-peer transactions as a currency.
Bitcoins have three qualities useful in a currency, according to The Economist in
January 2015: they are "hard to earn, limited in supply and easy to verify". Per some
researchers, as of 2015, bitcoin functions more as a payment system than as a
currency. E economists define money as serving the following three purposes: a store
of value, a medium of exchange, and a unit of account. According to The Economist
in 2014, bitcoin functions best as a medium of exchange. However, this is debated,
and a 2018 assessment by The Economist stated that cryptocurrencies met none of
these three criteria.
 
Yale economist Robert J. Shiller writes that bitcoin has potential as a unit of account
for measuring the relative value of goods, as with Chile's Unidad de Fomento, but
that "Bitcoin in its present form ... doesn't solve any sensible economic
problem".According to research by the University of Cambridge, between 2.9 million
and 5.8 million unique users used a cryptocurrency wallet in 2017, most of them for
bitcoin. The number of users has grown significantly since 201 when there were
300,000–1.3 million users.
 
=== Acceptance by merchants ===
 
Dish Network, a Fortune 500 subscription TV provider, has been described as the first
large company to accept bitcoin, in 2014. B Bloomberg reported that the largest 17
crypto merchant-processing services handled $69 million in June 2018, down from
$411 million in September 2017. Bitcoin is "not usable" for retail transactions because
of high costs and the inability to process chargebacks, according to Nicholas Weaver,
a researcher quoted by Bloomberg. High price volatility and transaction fees make
paying for small retail purchases with bitcoin impractical, according to economist Kim
Grauer. However, bitcoin continues to be used for large-item purchases on sites such
as Overstock.com, and crosser payments to freelancers and other vendors. In 2017
and 2018, bitcoin's acceptance among major online retailers included only three of
the top 500 U.S. online merchants, down from five in 2016. Reasons for this decline
include high transaction fees due to bitcoin's scalability issues and long transaction
times. As of 2018, the overwhelming majority of bitcoin transactions took place on
cryptocurrency exchanges, rather than being used in transactions with merchants.
Delays in processing payments through the blockchain of about ten minutes make
bitcoin use very difficult in a retail setting. Prices are not usually quoted in units of
bitcoin and many trades involve one, or sometimes two, conversions into
conventional currencies. Merchants that do accept bitcoin payments may use
payment service providers to perform the conversions.
 
=== Financial institutions ===
 
Bitcoins can be bought on digital currency exchanges.
 
Per researchers, "there is little sign of bitcoin use" in international remittances
despite high fees charged by banks and Western Union who compete in this market.
The South China Morning Post, however, mentions the use of bitcoin by Hong Kong
workers to transfer money home. In 2014, the National Australia Bank closed
accounts of businesses with ties to bitcoin, and HSBC refused to serve a hedge fund
with links to bitcoin. Australian banks in general have been reported as closing down
bank accounts of operators of businesses involving the currency. On 10 December
2017, the Chicago Board Options Exchange started trading bitcoin futures, followed
by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, which started trading bitcoin futures on 17
December 2017. In September 2019 the Central Bank of Venezuela, at the request of
PDVSA, ran tests to determine if bitcoin and ether could be held in the central bank's
reserves. The request was motivated by the oil company's goal to pay its suppliers.
François R. Velde, Senior Economist at the Chicago Fed, described bitcoin as "an
elegant solution to the problem of creating a digital currency". David Andolfatto,
Vice President at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, stated that bitcoin is a threat
to the establishment, which he argues is a good thing for the Federal Reserve System
and other central banks because it prompts these institutions to operate sound
policies.: 33
 
=== As an investment ===
 
The Winklevoss twins have purchased bitcoin. In 2013, The Washington Post
reported a claim that they owned 1% of all the bitcoins in existence at the time.
Other methods of investment are bitcoin funds. The first regulated bitcoin fund was
established in Jersey in July 2014 and approved by the Jersey Financial Services
Commission. Forbes named bitcoin the best investment of 2013. In 2014, Bloomberg
named bitcoin one of its worst investments of the year. In 2015, bitcoin topped
Bloomberg's currency tables. According to bitinfocharts.com, in 2017, there were
9,272 bitcoin wallets with more than $1 million worth of bitcoins. The exact number
of bitcoin millionaires is uncertain as a single person can have more than one bitcoin
wallet.
 
=== Venture capital ===
 
Peter Thiel's Founders Fund invested US$3 million in BitPay. In 2012, an incubator for
bitcoin-focused start-ups was founded by Adam Draper, with financing help from his
father, venture capitalist Tim Draper, one of the largest bitcoin holders after winning
an auction of ₿30,000, at the time called "mystery buyer". The company's goal is to
fund 100 bitcoin businesses within 2–3 years with $10,000 to $20,000 for a 6% stake.
Investors also invest in bitcoin mining. According to a 2015 study by Paolo Tasca,
bitcoin startups raised almost $1 billion in three years (Q1 2012 – Q1 2015).
 
=== Price and volatility ===
 
The price of bitcoins has gone through cycles of appreciation and depreciation
referred to by some as bubbles and busts. In 2011, the value of one bitcoin rapidly
rose from about US$0.30 to US$32 before returning to US$2. In the latter half of
2012 and during the 2012–13 Cypriot financial crisis, the bitcoin price began to rise,
reaching a high of US$266 on 10 April 2013, before crashing to around US$50. On 29
November 2013, the cost of one bitcoin rose to a peak of US$1,242. In 2014, the
price fell sharply, and as of April remained depressed at little more than half of 2013
prices. As of August 2014, it was under US$600.According to Mark T. Williams, as of
30 September 2014, bitcoin has volatility seven times greater than gold, eight times
greater than the S&P 500, and 18 times greater than the US dollar. The hold is a
meme created about holding (as opposed to selling) during periods of volatility.
Unusual for an asset, bitcoin weekend trading during December 2020 was higher
than for weekdays. Hedge funds (using high leverage and derivates) have attempted
to use the volatility to profit from downward price movements. At the end of January
2021, such positions were over $1 billion, their highest of all time.
 
As of 8 February 2021, the closing price of bitcoin equaled US$44,797.
 
== Legal status, tax and regulation ==
 
Because of bitcoin's decentralized nature and its trading on online exchanges located
in many countries, regulation of bitcoin has been difficult. However, the use of
bitcoin can be criminalized and shutting down exchanges and the peer-to-peer
economy in a given country would constitute a de facto ban. The legal status of
bitcoin varies substantially from country to country and is still undefined or changing
in many of them. Regulations and bans that apply to bitcoin probably extend to
similar cryptocurrency systems. According to the Library of Congress, an "absolute
ban" on trading or using cryptocurrencies applies in nine countries: Algeria, Bolivia,
Egypt, Iraq, Morocco, Nepal, Pakistan, Vietnam, and the United Arab Emirates. An
"implicit ban" applies in 15 countries, which include Bahrain, Bangladesh, China,
Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Indonesia, Kuwait, Lesotho, Lithuania, Macau,
Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Taiwan. On 22 October 2015, the European Court of
Justice ruled that bitcoin transactions would be exempt from Value Added Tax.
 
=== Regulatory warnings ===
 
The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission has issued four "Customer
Advisories" for bitcoin and related investments. A July 2018 warning emphasized that
trading in any cryptocurrency is often speculative, and there is a risk of theft from
hacking and fraud. In May 2014 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission warned
that investments involving bitcoin might have high rates of fraud and that investors
might be solicited on social media sites. An earlier "Investor Alert" warned about the
use of bitcoin in Ponzi schemes. The European Banking Authority issued a warning in
2013 focusing on the lack of regulation of bitcoin, the chance that exchanges would
be hacked, the volatility of bitcoin's price, and general fraud. FINRA and the North
American Securities Administrators Association have both issued investor alerts
about bitcoin.
 
=== Price manipulation investigation ===
 
An official investigation into bitcoin traders was reported in May 2018. The U.S.
Justice Department launched an investigation into possible price manipulation,
including the techniques of spoofing and wash trades. The U.S. federal investigation
was prompted by concerns of possible manipulation during future settlement dates.
The final settlement price of CME bitcoin futures is determined by prices on four
exchanges, Bitstamp, Coinbase, itBit, and Kraken. Following the first delivery date in
January 2018, the CME requested extensive detailed trading information but several
of the exchanges refused to provide it and later provided only limited data. The
Commodity Futures Trading Commission then subpoenaed the data from the
exchanges. State and provincial securities regulators, coordinated through the North
American Securities Administrators Association, are investigating "bitcoin scams" and
ICOs in 40 jurisdictions. Academic research published in the Journal of Monetary
Economics concluded that price manipulation occurred during the Mt Gox bitcoin
theft and that the market remains vulnerable to manipulation. The history of hacks,
fraud, and theft involving bitcoin dates back to at least 2011. Research by John M.
Griffin and Amin Shams in 2018 suggests that trading associated with increases in
the amount of the Tether cryptocurrency and associated trading at the Bitfinex
exchange account for about half of the price increase in bitcoin in late 2017. J.L. van
der Velde, CEO of both Bitfinex and Tether, denied the claims of price manipulation:
"Bitfinex nor Tether is, or has ever, engaged in any sort of market or price
manipulation. Tether issuances cannot be used to prop up the price of bitcoin or any
other coin/token on Bitfinex."
 
=== Use by governments ===
 
In June 2021, the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador voted on legislation to make
bitcoin legal tender in El Salvador, alongside the US dollar. The law took effect on 7
September, making El Salvador the first country to do so. The implementation of the
law has been met with protests and calls to make the currency optional, not
compulsory. According to a survey by the Central American University, the majority
of Salvadorans disagreed with using cryptocurrency as a legal tender, and a survey
by the Center for Citizen Studies (CEC) showed that 91% of the country prefers the
dollar over bitcoin. As of October 2021, the country's government was exploring
mining bitcoin with geothermal power and issuing bonds tied to bitcoin. According
to a survey done by the Central American University 100 days after the Bitcoin Law
came into force: 34.8% of the population has no confidence in bitcoin, 35.3% has
little confidence, 13.2% has some confidence, and 14.1% has a lot of confidence.
56.6% of respondents have downloaded the government bitcoin wallet; among them,
62.9% have never used it or only once whereas 36.3% use bitcoin at least once a
month. In 2022, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) urged El Salvador to reverse
its decision after bitcoin lost half its value in two months. The IMF also warned that it
would be difficult to get a loan from the institution. According to one report in 2022,
80% of businesses refused to accept bitcoin despite being legally required to. In April
2022, the Central African Republic (CAR) adopted Bitcoin as a legal tender alongside
the CFA franc. After El Salvador, CAR is the second country to do so. Ukraine is
accepting donations in cryptocurrency, including bitcoin, to fund the resistance
against the Russian invasion. According to the officials, 40% of Ukraine's military
suppliers are willing to accept cryptocurrencies without converting them into euros
or dollars. In March 2022, Ukraine passed a law that creates a legal framework for the
cryptocurrency industry in the country, including judicial protection of the right to
own virtual assets. In the same month, a cryptocurrency exchange was integrated
into the Ukrainian e-governance service Diva. Iran announced pending regulations
that would require bitcoin miners in Iran to sell bitcoin to the Central Bank of Iran,
and the central bank would use it for imports. Iran, as of October 2020, had issued
over 1,000 bitcoin mining licenses. The Iranian government initially took a stance
against cryptocurrency, but later changed it after seeing that digital currency could
be used to circumvent sanctions. The US Office of Foreign Assets Control listed two
Iranians and their bitcoin addresses as part of its Specially Designated Nationals and
Blocked Persons List for their role in the 2018 Atlanta cyberattack whose ransom was
paid in bitcoin. In Switzerland, the Canton of Zug accepts tax payments in bitcoin.
 
== Economic and legal concerns ==
 
Bitcoin, along with other cryptocurrencies, has been described as an economic
bubble by at least eight Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences laureates,
including Robert Shiller, Joseph Stiglitz, and Richard Thaler. Economist and columnist
Paul Krugman has described bitcoin as "a bubble wrapped in techno-mysticism
inside a cocoon of libertarian ideology", economist Nouriel Roubini of New York
University has called bitcoin the "mother of all bubbles", and University of Chicago
economist James Heckman has compared it to the 17th-century tulip mania.
Journalists, economists, investors, and the central bank of Estonia have voiced
concerns that bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme. Eric Posner, a law professor at the University
of Chicago, states that "a real Ponzi scheme takes fraud; bitcoin, by contrast, seems
more like a collective delusion." A 2014 report by the World Bank concluded that
bitcoin was not a deliberate Ponzi scheme.: 7 Also in 2014, the Swiss Federal Council
examined concerns that bitcoin might be a pyramid scheme, and concluded that
"since in the case of bitcoin the typical promises of profits are lacking, it cannot be
assumed that bitcoin is a pyramid scheme.": 21 Bitcoin wealth is highly concentrated,
with 0.01% holding 27% of in-circulation currency, as of 2021.
 
=== Use in illegal transactions ===
 
The use of bitcoin by criminals has attracted the attention of financial regulators,
legislative bodies, law enforcement, and the media. Several news outlets have
asserted that the popularity of bitcoins hinges on the ability to use them to purchase
illegal goods. Nobel-prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz says that bitcoin's
anonymity encourages money laundering and other crimes.
 
== Environmental impact ==
 
== Software implementation ==
 
Bitcoin Core is free and open-source software that serves as a bitcoin node (the set
of which form the bitcoin network) and provides a bitcoin wallet that fully verifies
payments. It is considered to be bitcoin's reference implementation. Initially, the
software was published by Satoshi Nakamoto under the name "Bitcoin" and later
renamed to "Bitcoin Core" to distinguish it from the network. It is also known as the
Satoshi client. The MIT Digital Currency Initiative funds some of the development of
Bitcoin Core. The project also maintains the cryptography library libsecp256k1.
Bitcoin Core includes a transaction verification engine and connects to the bitcoin
network as a full node. Moreover, a cryptocurrency wallet, which can be used to
transfer funds, is included by default. The wallet allows for the sending and receiving
of bitcoins. It does not facilitate the buying or selling of bitcoin. It allows users to
generate QR codes to receive payment.
 
The software validates the entire blockchain, which includes all bitcoin transactions
ever. This distributed ledger which has reached more than 235 gigabytes in size as of
Jan 2019, must be downloaded or synchronized before full participation of the client
may occur. Although the complete blockchain is not needed all at once since it is
possible to run in pruning mode. A command line-based daemon with a JSON-RPC
interface, bitcoind, is bundled with Bitcoin Core. It also provides access to testnet, a
global testing environment that imitates the bitcoin main network using an
alternative blockchain where valueless "test bitcoins" are used. Request or Regression
Test Mode creates a private blockchain that is used as a local testing environment.
Finally, bitcoin-client, a simple program that allows users to send RPC commands to
bitcoind, is also included.
 
Checkpoints that have been hard coded into the client are used only to prevent
Denial of Service attacks against nodes that are initially syncing the chain. For this
reason, the checkpoints included are only as of several years ago. A one-megabyte
block size limit was added in 2010 by Satoshi Nakamoto. This limited the maximum
network capacity to about three transactions per second. Since then, network
capacity has been improved incrementally both through block size increases and
improved wallet behavior. A network alert system was included by Satoshi Nakamoto
as a way of informing users of important news regarding bitcoin. In November 2016
it was retired. It had become obsolete as news on bitcoin is now widely disseminated.
 
Bitcoin Core includes a scripting language inspired by Forth that can define
transactions and specify parameters. ScriptPubKey is used to "lock" transactions
based on a set of future conditions. scriptSig is used to meet these conditions or
"unlock" a transaction. Operations on the data are performed by various OP_Codes.
Two stacks are used – main and alt. Looping is forbidden.
 
Bitcoin Core uses OpenTimestamps to timestamp merge commits. The original
creator of the bitcoin client has described their approach to the software's authorship
as it being written first to prove to themselves that the concept of purely peer-to-
peer electronic cash was valid and that a paper with solutions could be written. The
lead developer is Wladimir J. van der Laan, who took over the role on 8 April 2014.
Gavin Andresen was the former lead maintainer for the software client. Andresen left
the role of lead developer for bitcoin to work on the strategic development of its
technology. Bitcoin Core in 2015 was central to a dispute with Bitcoin XT, a
competing client that sought to increase the block size. Over a dozen different
companies and industry groups fund the development of Bitcoin Core.
 
== In popular culture ==
 
=== Term "HODL" ===
 
Hold ( HOD-əl; often written HODL) is slang in the cryptocurrency community for
holding a cryptocurrency rather than selling it. A person who does this is known as a
Hodler. It originated in a December 2013 post on the Bitcoin Forum message board
by an inebriated user who posted with a typo in the subject, "I AM HODLING." It is
often humorously suggested to be a backronym to "hold on for dear life". In 2017,
Quartz listed it as one of the essential slang terms in bitcoin culture, and described it
as a stance, "to stay invested in bitcoin and not to capitulate in the face of plunging
prices." TheStreet.com referred to it as the "favorite mantra" of bitcoin holders.
Bloomberg News referred to it as a mantra for holders during market routs.
 
=== Literature ===
 
In Charles Stross' 2013 science fiction novel, Neptune's Brood, the universal
interstellar payment system is known as "bitcoin" and operates using cryptography.
Stross later blogged that the reference was intentional, saying "I wrote Neptune's
Brood in 2011. Bitcoin was obscure back then, and I figured had just enough name
recognition to be a useful term for an interstellar currency: it'd clue people in that it
was a networked digital currency."
 
=== Film ===
 
The 2014 documentary The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin portrays the diversity of motives
behind the use of bitcoin by interviewing people who use it. These include a
computer programmer and a drug dealer. The 2016 documentary Banking on Bitcoin
is an introduction to the beginnings of bitcoin and the ideas behind cryptocurrency
today.
 
=== Music ===
 
In 2018, a Japanese band called Kasotsuka Shojo – Virtual Currency Girls – launched.
Each of the eight members represented a cryptocurrency, including bitcoin,
Ethereum, and Cardano.
 
=== Academia ===
 
In September 2015, the establishment of the peer-reviewed academic journal Ledger
(ISSN 2379-5980) was announced. It covers studies of cryptocurrencies and related
technologies and is published by the University of Pittsburgh. The journal encourages
authors to digitally sign a file hash of submitted papers, which will then be
timestamped into the bitcoin blockchain. Authors are also asked to include a
personal bitcoin address on the first page of their papers.
 
== See also ==
 
== Notes ==
 
== References ==
 
== External links ==
 
Media related to Bitcoin at Wikimedia Commons
 
Official website
 
Bitcoin at Curlie