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If somebody approached you 14 years ago and told you that in the future, you would be able to send money to anyone over the Internet, and no financial institution would be involved, would you believe them? In 2008, during the full swing of the financial crisis, a group of tech-savvy believers helped bring to life a solution that would shake the fundamentals of traditional finance. That’s how Bitcoin came to be.
Bitcoin became the world’s first decentralized digital currency. It was created to become a fast cryptocurrency that cannot be hacked or duplicated, allowing the transfer of value without the need for third parties such as banks. This was achieved by leveraging blockchain technology, a decentralized database made out of blocks of transactions. The more blocks in a chain, the more secure the blockchain is, making Bitcoin resistant to any hacking attempts.
Bitcoin revolutionized the approach to digital currencies and provided a conceptual and technological foundation for thousands more competing ideas in the next chapter in the history of currencies.
It has spawned a global community of millions of enthusiasts that develop, invest in, trade, and use Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in their daily lives.
The entire cryptocurrency sector, which is at the time of writing (June 2024) currently worth $2.58 trillion, is based on the concept pioneered by Bitcoin. Bitcoin alone takes up 53.1% of the whole cryptocurrency market cap value.
If somebody approached you 14 years ago and told you that in the future, you would be able to send money to anyone over the Internet, and no financial institution would be involved, would you believe them? In 2008, during the full swing of the financial crisis, a group of tech-savvy believers helped bring to life a solution that would shake the fundamentals of traditional finance. That’s how Bitcoin came to be.
Bitcoin became the world’s first decentralized digital currency. It was created to become a fast cryptocurrency that cannot be hacked or duplicated, allowing the transfer of value without the need for third parties such as banks. This was achieved by leveraging blockchain technology, a decentralized database made out of blocks of transactions. The more blocks in a chain, the more secure the blockchain is, making Bitcoin resistant to any hacking attempts.
Bitcoin revolutionized the approach to digital currencies and provided a conceptual and technological foundation for thousands more competing ideas in the next chapter in the history of currencies.
It has spawned a global community of millions of enthusiasts that develop, invest in, trade, and use Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in their daily lives.
The entire cryptocurrency sector, which is at the time of writing (June 2024) currently worth $2.58 trillion, is based on the concept pioneered by Bitcoin. Bitcoin alone takes up 53.1% of the whole cryptocurrency market cap value.
BTC is Bitcoin’s ticker symbol. Just like the United States Dollar has a symbol USD. Here are some ways you can use your Bitcoin.
At the time of writing (June 5th, 2024), Bitcoin’s price is $70,737.59. The current Market Cap ranking is #1, with a market cap of $1.39T.
Bitcoin has been in an uptrend since the beginning of 2024, reaching its all-time high (ATH) price. The rise was propelled by the approval of BTC spot ETFs in the U.S.A. and the long-anticipated halving event. All other cryptocurrencies started to follow, but not with the same strength as Bitcoin still.
Bitcoin is considered the past decade’s best-performing asset, having ten times bigger returns than the NASDAQ 100. The numbers show that if you invested $100 into Bitcoin in 2010, today, that would be worth more than $15M. Additionally, it indicates that Bitcoin has stood the test of time as an investment asset.
Bitcoin has an average year-on-year growth of 73.2%, and usually, major price movements are tied to the process of halving that we will mention in the next section.
Bitcoin’s maximum supply is capped by software and will never exceed 21,000,000 coins. In return for using their computer power to secure the network and process transactions (add blocks to the blockchain), people get rewarded in Bitcoin. This process is called Mining.
During the early days of Bitcoin, the rewards for securing transactions or a block were much higher than nowadays. A “halving” process reduces the reward for a secured block every 210,000 blocks, or roughly four years, increasing the scarcity of Bitcoin and thus making it more valuable.
The most recent halving happened on Apr 19th, 2024, when the reward was reduced from 6.25 Bitcoin to 3.125 Bitcoin per block.
Bitcoin did not have an initial distribution of tokens. Still, early network users amassed hefty amounts of Bitcoin due to significant block rewards that were 50 Bitcoin per secured block. For example, Bitcoin’s creator has around 1 million Bitcoin tied to his wallet address. Unfortunately, many users have either lost access to their wallets or lost wallets themselves who today hold Bitcoin valued at millions of dollars.
Bitcoin, as a cryptocurrency champion, has become an in-demand asset. It is available for purchase in many ways, with high supply across the board.
The primary way people buy their Bitcoin is through centralized exchanges because they offer the ability to purchase them with credit/debit cards, which most people prefer.
Although significantly more complicated, the second way is through decentralized exchanges such as Uniswap. Decentralized exchanges usually require users to already have some cryptocurrencies in their wallets to buy other cryptos. Since Uniswap is built on the Ethereum blockchain, Bitcoin that you can purchase over there is called wBTC (Wrapped BTC), and those coins represent the value of Bitcoin on Ethereum.
Finally, it can be purchased easily through a broker app such as our Veli App, where you can get your hands on some Bitcoin in just a few taps on the screen.
The creator of Bitcoin is only known under the pseudonym “Satoshi Nakamoto.” As of 2022, the true identity of the person or organization behind the alias remains unknown.
Although Nakamoto was the inventor of Bitcoin and the author of its first implementation, he provided Gavin Andresen, who later became the Bitcoin Foundation’s primary developer, with the network alert key and management of the code repository. Over the years, many contributors have improved the cryptocurrency’s software by patching vulnerabilities and adding new features.
Bitcoin has amassed an impressive community during its life span, especially its developer community.
Bitcoin’s GitHub code repository has more than 750 contributors, while the most popular Bitcoin forum called Bitcointalk counts over 3.4M members.
Some of the world’s most prominent investors and VC funds, such as Alameda Research, LD Capital, Pantera Capital, Winklevoss Capital, Paul Tudor Jones, Ray Dalio, and Michael Novogratz, have invested in Bitcoin and are holding it in their portfolios.
Spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have been established in ten countries and are traded across five geographical markets, with the long-awaited US BTC spot ETF launching in 2024. These countries include G20 members such as the US, Canada, Germany, Brazil, and Australia, as well as tax havens like Bermuda, Jersey, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and Guernsey. The US dominates the spot Bitcoin ETF market, capturing 83%, with major financial institutions like BlackRock and Fidelity leading the way.
Additionally, many countries are legalizing Bitcoin and are on the way to including Bitcoin as one of their legal tenders. Some countries have already done it, such as El Salvador and a part of Switzerland.
Bitcoin has had its fair share of legal activity, both good and bad. In its early days up until recently, many countries have tried to ban BTC because it was not compliant with all sorts of regulations, and governments could not control it. In recent times, things have changed, and many countries are now figuring out how to implement BTC into their economic systems with different laws. Europe has embraced cryptocurrencies by implementing the legal regulatory framework MiCA. The UAE has developed a crypto-friendly regulatory framework, and the US has launched its first BTC spot ETFs.
Bitcoin has been on the path of constant growth in adoption during its lifetime. It has started slowly, but in recent years, it has begun to speed up, and the numbers are showing it:
Bitcoin’s biggest competitors are Ethereum and Litecoin.
Ethereum is Bitcoin’s number one competitor. The main difference between Ethereum and Bitcoin is that Ethereum is the world’s first programmable blockchain that allows people to use blockchain technology to create different kinds of applications and host them on the Ethereum network.
Litecoin is the hard fork of Bitcoin. A hard fork is when the participants of the network disagree on the proposed update and the network splits into two. Litecoin was then created with the purpose of being faster than Bitcoin and as a payment method. Like Litecoin, there have been many Bitcoin forks such as Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Gold, and Bitcoin SV.
We have also prepared this table to better illustrate their differences through numbers.
Bitcoin | Ethereum | Litecoin | |
|---|---|---|---|
Transactions Per Second | 7 | 15 | 56 |
Time Needed to Confirm a Transaction | 60 min | 6 min | 3-5 min |
Average Transaction Fee | 1.62$ | 15$ | $0.03-$0.04 |
Market Cap | $1.39t | $457b | $6.2b |
Circulation Supply | 93.85% in circulation | no limit on the number of tokens | 88.82% in circulation |
Total Number of Wallet Addresses | 1.29b | 212.66m | 281.3m |
Total Number of Daily Active Users | 654.7k | 457.4k | 342.3k |
Launch Date | 2009 | 2015 | 2011 |
Average Growth Rate | 73.2% | 145.1% | 75.86% |
As with any other asset class, there are risks involved when it comes to investing. Since there are many kinds of cryptocurrencies, risks can be grouped into two categories – general risks that apply when investing in cryptocurrencies and risks that only apply to specific assets.
We have prepared a guide that addresses general cryptocurrency investing risks and offers tips on how to mitigate them, while risks that only apply to specific assets are addressed directly in the coin guides such as this one.
Website: https://bitcoin.org/en/
Bitcointalk: https://bitcointalk.org/
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/bitcoin
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Bitcoin
The year 2024 will be remembered as a pivotal point in Bitcoin’s acceptance and adoption. The launch of the first spot BTC ETFs in the US, led by major financial institutions like BlackRock and Fidelity, marked a significant milestone. Within the first three days of trading, spot Bitcoin ETFs attracted nearly $2 billion. The iShares Bitcoin ETF (IBIT), introduced by BlackRock, achieved a remarkable feat by becoming the fastest ETF in history to reach the US$10 billion mark, accomplishing this in under two months. This broke the previous record held by the SPDR Gold Shares (GLD), which took over two years to achieve the same milestone. Additionally, the BTC halving event occurred, reducing mining rewards from 6.25 Bitcoin to 3.125 Bitcoin per block.
Meanwhile, inflation has been rising globally with no abating. Billionaire investors Paul Tudor Jones, Ray Dalio, and Peter Thiel have all touted Bitcoin as a store-of-value asset in the current rising inflationary environment, in some cases preferring “digital gold” to the precious metal.
Additionally, big companies like VISA and Paypal already have their crypto divisions.
In addition, Bitcoin acceptance has become a cross-generational phenomenon, with many institutions interested in gaining exposure to Bitcoin investment products. Bitcoin network and adoption are in constant growth, and Bitcoin history and network activity show us just that.
