The concept was independently rediscovered by Adam Back who developed Hashcash, a proof-of-work scheme for spam control in 1997. The idea that solutions to computational puzzles could have some value was first proposed by cryptographers Cynthia Dwork and Moni Naor in 1992.

Main article: History of bitcoin Backgroundīefore bitcoin, several digital cash technologies were released, starting with David Chaum's ecash in the 1980s. As bitcoin is pseudonymous, its use by criminals has attracted the attention of regulators, leading to its ban by several countries as of 2021. It is mostly seen as an investment and has been described by many scholars as an economic bubble. Bitcoin is currently used more as a store of value and less as a medium of exchange or unit of account. 1 In 2021, El Salvador adopted it as legal tender. Use of bitcoin as a currency began in 2009, with the release of its open-source implementation.

īased on a free market ideology, bitcoin was invented in 2008 by Satoshi Nakamoto, an unknown person. Bitcoin mining requires increasing quantities of electricity and was responsible for 0.2% of world greenhouse gas emissions as of 2022. Nodes in the peer-to-peer bitcoin network verify transactions through cryptography and record them in a public distributed ledger, called a blockchain, without central oversight.Ĭonsensus between nodes is achieved using a computationally intensive system based on proof-of-work called mining. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols.īitcoin ( abbreviation: BTC or XBT sign: ₿) is the first decentralized cryptocurrency. This article contains special characters. Initially ₿50 per block, halved every 210,000 blocks 'Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System'Ġ.1.0 / 9 January 2009 (14 years ago) ( )Ģ5.1 / 19 October 2023 (2 months ago) ( )

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