Bitcoin

Table of Contents
bitcoin
Table of Contents

Bitcoin is the most popular and most expensive cryptocurrency in the world today. It started an industry that now includes thousands of other cryptocurrencies.

Bitcoin is developed on the basis of blockchain technology – a unified distributed database containing information about all transactions made. According to the creator’s idea, unlike infinitely printable paper money, the number of bitcoins is limited and can amount to a maximum of 21 million coins.

bitcoin

The creator of bitcoin

Until now, no one knows exactly who invented bitcoin. Bitcoin was created by a certain person (or group of people) hiding under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. In 2008, he published an article describing the principle of cryptocurrency. The next year, he presented a working system, which is a few years has turned from fun to a serious financial instrument.

There have been many attempts to identify the person or group of people hiding under the name Satoshi Nakamoto, but so far no one has succeeded.

getting bitcoin

Getting Bitcoin

Like any other cryptocurrency, bitcoins have several ways of getting. The simplest is to buy them on one of the cryptocurrency exchanges for fiat money, such as dollars. You can accept bitcoins as payment for your services or products. Or you can learn how to mine and get bitcoins for it.

As we said above, the maximum number of bitcoins that can exist online is limited to 21 million. Since mining began in 2009, more than 18.7 million bitcoins have already been mined. Thus, only about 3 million bitcoins can be mined. Even with the growing power of processors, experts suggest that the last bitcoin will be mined only by 2140.

price of bitcoin

The price of bitcoin

In 2009, the New Liberty Standard exchange set the bitcoin exchange rate – one bitcoin about $0.000764. But after a few months, its price rose to $0.50.

The bitcoin exchange rate continued to resemble a roller coaster ride – with sharp rises, similar declines, and periods of volatility. The first big peak came in 2013 when the cryptocurrency exceeded the $1,000 mark, followed by a sharp drop. And since the fall of 2017, the chart has rushed upward again, until it reached a record high of $64,300 in April 2021.

After such figures, it is hard to believe that in May 2010 one bitcoin, which is now worth tens of thousands of dollars, could be bought for less than a cent.

That’s when the first purchase for bitcoins was made – programmer Laszlo Hanyecz, who was involved in creating the cryptocurrency code, bought two pizzas for 10,000 BTC. At that rate, they were worth about $40. Naturally, he did not buy the pizzas directly from the restaurant, but just transferred bitcoins to another person who ordered the pizza. Now the amount the programmer would spend on the pizza would be about $450 million.

There is another notable case. James Howells, a resident of Newport, UK, accidentally threw away a hard drive with 7,500 bitcoins in 2013. At the time, the value of each token was about $1,250, giving a total of more than $9 million. By the way, he’s still trying to find the disk by going through the rubble at the junkyard where it allegedly ended up.

One way or another, bitcoin changed the approach to the monetary systems around the world in its time, and, judging by the rate of growth and development of the cryptocurrency, it is not going to give up its position.