Bitcoin, a digital currency created by an anonymous computer programmer or group of programmers known as Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009. Owners of Bitcoins can use various Web sites to trade them for physical currencies, such as U.S. dollars or euros, or can exchange them for goods and services from a number of vendors.
Nakamoto was concerned that traditional currencies were too reliant on the trustworthiness of banks to work properly. Nakamoto proposed a digital currency, Bitcoin, that could serve as a medium of exchange without relying on any financial institutions or governments. The proposal was made in October 2008 in a paper published on the Bitcoin Web site, which had been founded in August 2008.
Bitcoin relies on public-key cryptography, in which users have a public key that is available for everyone to see and a private key is known only to their computers. In a Bitcoin transaction, users receiving Bitcoins send their public keys to users transferring the Bitcoins. Users transferring the coins sign with their private keys, and the transaction is then transmitted over the Bitcoin network. So that no Bitcoin can be spent more than once at the same time, the time and amount of each transaction is recorded in a ledger file that exists at each node of the network.
The identities of the users remain relatively anonymous, but everyone can see that certain Bitcoins were transferred. Transactions are put together in groups called blocks. The blocks are organized in a chronological sequence called the blockchain. Blocks are added to the chain using a mathematical process that makes it extremely difficult for an individual user to hijack the blockchain. The blockchain technology that underpins Bitcoin has attracted considerable attention, even from skeptics of Bitcoin, as a basis for allowing trustworthy record-keeping and commerce without a central authority.
New Bitcoins are created by users running the Bitcoin client on their computers. The client “mines” Bitcoins by running a program that solves a difficult mathematical problem in a file called a “block” received by all users on the Bitcoin network. The difficulty of the problem is adjusted so that, no matter how many people are mining Bitcoins, the problem is solved, on average, six times an hour. When a user solves the problem in a block, that user receives a certain number of Bitcoins.
The elaborate procedure for mining Bitcoins ensures that their supply is restricted and grows at a steadily decreasing rate. About every four years, the number of Bitcoins in a block, which began at 50, is halved, and the number of maximum allowable Bitcoins is slightly less than 21 million. As of 2021 there were more than 18.6 million Bitcoins, and it is estimated that the maximum number will be reached around 2140.
Because the algorithm that produces Bitcoins makes them at a near-constant rate, early miners of Bitcoins obtained them more often than later miners because the network was small. The premium that early users received and Nakamoto’s silence after 2011 led to criticism of Bitcoin as a Ponzi scheme, with Nakamoto benefiting as one of the first users. (An analysis of the first 36,289 mined blocks showed that one miner, believed to be Nakamoto, had accumulated over 1 million Bitcoins.
However, as of 2021, those Bitcoins, then valued at $50 billion, remained unspent.) Defenders of Bitcoin claim that early users should receive some return for investing in an unproven technology.
The value of Bitcoins relative to physical currencies fluctuated wildly in the years following its introduction. In August 2010 one Bitcoin was worth $0.05 (U.S.). Beginning in May 2011, the Bitcoin increased sharply in value, reaching a peak of about $30 that June, but by the end of the year the value of a Bitcoin had collapsed to less than $3. However, Bitcoin began to attract the attention of mainstream investors, and its value climbed to a high of over $1,100 in December 2013. Some companies even began building computers optimized for Bitcoin mining.
With the marked increase in value, Bitcoin became a target for hackers, who could steal Bitcoins through such means as obtaining a user’s private key or stealing the digital “wallet” (a computer file recording a Bitcoin balance). The most spectacular theft was revealed in February 2014 when Mt. Gox, which had been the world’s third-largest Bitcoin exchange, declared bankruptcy because of the theft of about 650,000 Bitcoins, then valued at about $380 million.
In 2017 the value of Bitcoins rose sharply from around $1,200 in April to more than $18,000 in December. The sharp rise in Bitcoin’s value encouraged more intensive mining. It was estimated in late 2017 that Bitcoin mining consumed 0.14 percent of the world’s electricity production. The value of Bitcoin sharply fell and fluctuated between about $3,500 and $12,000 from 2018 to late 2020, when institutional investors like hedge funds became interested in the currency. Another rally began, and early in 2021 Bitcoin reached an all-time high of almost $45,000 when Elon Musk announced that his car company Tesla was investing $1.5 billion in the currency.
