100-496: The XRP Ledger is a cryptocurrency platform launched in 2012. The XRPL employs the native cryptocurrency known as XRP, and supports tokens cryptocurrency or other units of value such as frequent flyer miles or mobile minutes . Development of the XRP Ledger began in 2011 by engineers David Schwartz, Jed McCaleb and Arthur Britto, with a discussion initiated by McCaleb on a public discussion board . The open-source project
200-410: A cryptocurrency exchange , which also operated a crypto hedge fund , and had been valued at $ 18 billion, filed for bankruptcy . The financial impact of the collapse extended beyond the immediate FTX customer base, as reported, while, at a Reuters conference, financial industry executives said that "regulators must step in to protect crypto investors." Technology analyst Avivah Litan commented on
300-419: A decentralized system, bitcoin operates without a central authority or single administrator, so that anyone can create a new bitcoin address and transact without needing any approval. This is accomplished through a specialized distributed ledger called a blockchain that records bitcoin transactions. The blockchain is implemented as an ordered list of blocks . Each block contains a SHA-256 hash of
400-422: A free market ideology, bitcoin was invented in 2008 by Satoshi Nakamoto , an unknown person. Use of bitcoin as a currency began in 2009, with the release of its open-source implementation . In 2021, El Salvador adopted it as legal tender . It is mostly seen as an investment and has been described by some scholars as an economic bubble . As bitcoin is pseudonymous , its use by criminals has attracted
500-422: A hash pointer as a link to a previous block, a timestamp , and transaction data. By design, blockchains are inherently resistant to modification of the data. It is "an open, distributed ledger that can record transactions between two parties efficiently and in a verifiable and permanent way". For use as a distributed ledger, a blockchain is typically managed by a peer-to-peer network collectively adhering to
600-635: A non-peer-reviewed study by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) estimated that bitcoin mining represented 0.4% of global electricity consumption . Another 2022 non-peer-reviewed commentary published in Joule estimated that bitcoin mining was responsible for 0.2% of world greenhouse gas emissions. About half of the electricity used is generated through fossil fuels . Moreover, mining hardware's short lifespan results in electronic waste . The amount of electrical energy consumed, and
700-469: A payment system than as a currency. In 2014, economist Robert J. Shiller wrote 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 really solve any sensible economic problem". François R. Velde, Senior Economist at the Chicago Fed , described bitcoin as "an elegant solution to
800-574: A proof-of-work scheme for spam control in 1997. The first proposals for distributed digital scarcity-based cryptocurrencies came from cypherpunks Wei Dai (b-money) and Nick Szabo ( bit gold ) in 1998. In 2004, Hal Finney developed the first currency based on reusable proof of work. These various attempts were not successful: Chaum's concept required centralized control and no banks wanted to sign on, Hashcash had no protection against double-spending , while b-money and bit gold were not resistant to Sybil attacks . The domain name bitcoin.org
900-538: A stablecoin , and the Celsius Network , a cryptocurrency loan company. In 2023, ordinals— non-fungible tokens (NFTs)—on bitcoin, went live. In January 2024, the first 11 US spot bitcoin ETFs began trading, offering direct exposure to bitcoin for the first time on American stock exchanges. As of June 2023, River Financial estimated that bitcoin had 81.7 million users, about 1% of the global population. At
1000-478: 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. In 2015, The Economist noted that bitcoins had three qualities useful in a currency: they are "hard to earn, limited in supply and easy to verify". However, a 2018 assessment by The Economist stated that cryptocurrencies met none of these three criteria. Per some researchers, as of 2015 , bitcoin functions more as
1100-557: A treasury reserve asset , Square, Inc. , $ 50 million, and MassMutual , $ 100 million. In November 2020, PayPal added support for bitcoin in the US. In February 2021, bitcoin's market capitalization reached $ 1 trillion for the first time. In November 2021, the Taproot soft-fork upgrade was activated, adding support for Schnorr signatures , improved functionality of smart contracts and Lightning Network . Before, bitcoin only used
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#17327978122571200-662: A "pure bubble" as its intrinsic value is zero. According to him, some bubbles are long-lasting such as gold and fiat currencies, and it's impossible to predict whether bitcoin will collapse like other financial bubbles or become the new gold. According to research published in the International Review of Financial Analysis in 2018, bitcoin as an asset is highly volatile and does not behave like any other conventional asset. According to one 2022 analysis published in The Journal of Alternative Investments , bitcoin
1300-461: A 2024 Nashville Bitcoin conference, Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump announced he was an energetic supporter of the industry and would make the country a "crypto capital of the planet". The unit of account of the bitcoin system is the bitcoin . It is most commonly represented with the symbol ₿ and the currency code BTC. However, the BTC code does not conform to ISO 4217 as BT
1400-547: A blockchain, mining is the validation of transactions. For this effort, successful miners obtain new cryptocurrency as a reward. The reward decreases transaction fees by creating a complementary incentive to contribute to the processing power of the network. The rate of generating hashes, which validate any transaction, has been increased by the use of specialized hardware such as FPGAs and ASICs running complex hashing algorithms like SHA-256 and scrypt . This arms race for cheaper-yet-efficient machines has existed since bitcoin
1500-428: A blockchain. A node is a computer that connects to a cryptocurrency network. The node supports the cryptocurrency's network through either relaying transactions, validation, or hosting a copy of the blockchain. In terms of relaying transactions, each network computer (node) has a copy of the blockchain of the cryptocurrency it supports. When a transaction is made, the node creating the transaction broadcasts details of
1600-611: A charity sponsored by Ellen DeGeneres $ 4 million in the currency, which was noted at the time to be the "third most-valuable cryptocurrency on the market". On July 13, 2023, Judge Analisa Torres of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York issued a decision on motions for summary judgment and stated the XRP token itself is not a security, although the manner in which it
1700-428: A community of mutually distrustful parties referred to as miners . Miners use their computers to help validate and timestamp transactions, adding them to the ledger in accordance with a particular timestamping scheme. In a proof-of-stake blockchain, transactions are validated by holders of the associated cryptocurrency, sometimes grouped together in stake pools. Most cryptocurrencies are designed to gradually decrease
1800-681: A crackdown on cryptocurrency that had previously banned the operation of intermediaries and miners within China. On 15 September 2022, the world's second largest cryptocurrency at that time, Ethereum , transitioned its consensus mechanism from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS) in an upgrade process known as "the Merge". According to the Ethereum Founder, the upgrade would cut both Ethereum's energy use and carbon-dioxide emissions by 99.9%. On 11 November 2022, FTX Trading Ltd. ,
1900-619: A custom elliptic curve with the ECDSA algorithm to produce signatures . In September 2021, bitcoin became legal tender in El Salvador , alongside the US dollar. In October 2021, the first bitcoin futures exchange-traded fund (ETF), called BITO, from ProShares was approved by the SEC and listed on the CME . In May and June 2022, the bitcoin price fell following the collapses of TerraUSD ,
2000-587: A digital ledger , which is a computerized database using strong cryptography to secure transaction records, control the creation of additional coins, and verify the transfer of coin ownership. Despite the term that has come to describe many of the fungible blockchain tokens that have been created, cryptocurrencies are not considered to be currencies in the traditional sense, and varying legal treatments have been applied to them in various jurisdicitons, including classification as commodities , securities , and currencies. Cryptocurrencies are generally viewed as
2100-509: A digital wallet (which is a computer with software hosting your wallet information), to hosting your wallet using an exchange where cryptocurrency is traded, or by storing your wallet information on a digital medium such as plaintext. Bitcoin is pseudonymous , rather than anonymous ; the cryptocurrency in a wallet is not tied to a person but rather to one or more specific keys (or "addresses"). Thereby, bitcoin owners are not immediately identifiable, but all transactions are publicly available in
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#17327978122572200-439: A distinct asset class in practice. Some crypto schemes use validators to maintain the cryptocurrency. The first cryptocurrency was bitcoin , which was first released as open-source software in 2009. As of June 2023, there were more than 25,000 other cryptocurrencies in the marketplace, of which more than 40 had a market capitalization exceeding $ 1 billion. In 1983, American cryptographer David Chaum conceived of
2300-476: A full copy of the blockchain to check the validity of mined blocks, or lightweight clients, just to send and receive transactions without a local copy of the entire blockchain. Third-party internet services called online wallets store users' credentials on their servers, making them susceptible of hacks. Cold storage protects bitcoins from such hacks by keeping private keys offline, either through specialized hardware wallets or paper printouts. Nakamoto limited
2400-600: A growing use of bitcoin, alongside cash and cards, was reported in restaurant business. In September 2021, the Bitcoin Law made bitcoin legal tender in El Salvador , alongside the US dollar. The adoption has been criticized both internationally and within El Salvador. In particular, in 2022, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) urged El Salvador to reverse its decision. As of 2022 ,
2500-697: A man attempting to use them to buy illegal substances. This marked the first time a government agency had seized bitcoins. The FBI seized about ₿30,000 in October 2013 from Silk Road, following the arrest of its founder Ross Ulbricht . In 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. Research produced by
2600-570: A new address for each transaction. In the bitcoin network, each bitcoin is treated equally, ensuring basic fungibility . However, users and applications can choose to differentiate between bitcoins. While wallets and software treat all bitcoins the same, each bitcoin's transaction history is recorded on the blockchain. This public record allows for chain analysis , where users can identify and potentially reject bitcoins from controversial sources. For example, in 2012, Mt. Gox froze accounts containing bitcoins identified as stolen. Bitcoin wallets were
2700-507: A new block can collect transaction fees from the included transactions and a set reward in bitcoins. To claim this reward, a special transaction called a coinbase is included in the block, with the miner as the payee. All bitcoins in existence have been created through this type of transaction. This reward is halved every 210,000 blocks until ₿21 million, with new bitcoin issuance slated to end around 2140. Afterward, miners will only earn from transaction fees. These fees are determined by
2800-510: A number of stablecoins have crashed or lost their peg . For example, on 11 May 2022, Terra 's stablecoin UST fell from $ 1 to 26 cents. The subsequent failure of Terraform Labs resulted in the loss of nearly $ 40B invested in the Terra and Luna coins. In September 2022, South Korean prosecutors requested the issuance of an Interpol Red Notice against the company's founder, Do Kwon . In Hong Kong,
2900-425: A portion of XRP and periodically releases tokens into circulation through sales, aiming to maintain market stability. Cryptocurrency A cryptocurrency , crypto-currency , or crypto is a digital currency designed to work through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank , to uphold or maintain it. Individual coin ownership records are stored in
3000-410: A previous unspent output in the blockchain. Using multiple inputs is similar to using multiple coins in a cash transaction. As in a cash transaction, the sum of inputs can exceed the intended sum of payments. In such a case, an additional output can return the change back to the payer. Unallocated input satoshis in the transaction become the transaction fee. Losing a private key means losing access to
3100-399: A protocol for validating new blocks. Once recorded, the data in any given block cannot be altered retroactively without the alteration of all subsequent blocks, which requires collusion of the network majority. Blockchains are secure by design and are an example of a distributed computing system with high Byzantine fault tolerance . Decentralized consensus has therefore been achieved with
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3200-426: A random private key and then computing the corresponding address. This process is almost instant, but the reverse (finding the private key for a given address) is nearly impossible. Publishing a bitcoin address does not risk its private key, and it is extremely unlikely to accidentally generate a used key with funds. To use bitcoins, owners need their private key to digitally sign transactions, which are verified by
3300-543: A specialised bank called a "custodian". These physical representations of cryptocurrency do not hold any value by themselves; these are only utilized for collectable purposes. Cryptocurrency is produced by an entire cryptocurrency system collectively, at a rate that is defined when the system is created and that is publicly stated. In centralized banking and economic systems such as the US Federal Reserve System , corporate boards or governments control
3400-524: A trusted list of validators known as the Unique Node List (UNL). While this approach provides faster transaction validation and security, though it has led to discussions about centralization within the network. The XRP Ledger peer-to-peer overlay network is characterized by a small-world network topology, featuring a tightly clustered structure and short paths between nodes. As Yale economist Gary Gorton notes, "Ripple and XRPL are not
3500-399: A type of cryptographic electronic money called ecash . Later, in 1995, he implemented it through Digicash , an early form of cryptographic electronic payments. Digicash required user software in order to withdraw notes from a bank and designate specific encrypted keys before they could be sent to a recipient. This allowed the digital currency to be untraceable by a third party. In 1996,
3600-455: A valid partial proof-of-work. As of February 2018 , the Chinese government has halted trading of virtual currency, banned initial coin offerings, and shut down mining. Many Chinese miners have since relocated to Canada and Texas. One company is operating data centers for mining operations at Canadian oil and gas field sites due to low gas prices. In June 2018, Hydro Quebec proposed to
3700-454: Is a method of securing a cryptocurrency network and achieving distributed consensus through requesting users to show ownership of a certain amount of currency. It is different from proof-of-work systems that run difficult hashing algorithms to validate electronic transactions. The scheme is largely dependent on the coin, and there is currently no standard form of it. Some cryptocurrencies use a combined proof-of-work and proof-of-stake scheme. On
3800-435: Is 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 use of bitcoin by criminals has attracted the attention of financial regulators, legislative bodies, and law enforcement. Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz says that bitcoin's anonymity encourages money laundering and other crimes. This
3900-554: Is sold could constitute the sale of a security. "XRP, as a digital token, is not in and of itself a 'contract, transaction, or scheme' that embodies the Howey requirements of an investment contract". The XRP Ledger operates on a consensus protocol that differs from traditional proof-of-work (PoW) and proof-of-stake (PoS) mechanisms. Transactions are validated by a network of independent validators who reach consensus every 3 to 5 seconds, enabling rapid transaction settlement. Users rely on
4000-483: Is the combination of two words "alt" and "coin" and includes all alternatives to bitcoin." Altcoins often have underlying differences when compared to bitcoin. For example, Litecoin aims to process a block every 2.5 minutes, rather than bitcoin's 10 minutes which allows Litecoin to confirm transactions faster than bitcoin. Another example is Ethereum , which has smart contract functionality that allows decentralized applications to be run on its blockchain. Ethereum
4100-449: Is the country code of Bhutan, and ISO 4217 requires the first letter used in global commodities to be 'X'. XBT, a code that conforms to ISO 4217 though not officially part of it, is used by Bloomberg L.P. No uniform capitalization convention exists; some sources use Bitcoin , capitalized, to refer to the technology and network , and bitcoin , lowercase, for the unit of account. The Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary and
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4200-513: Is the first decentralized cryptocurrency . 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. Consensus between nodes is achieved using a computationally intensive process based on proof of work , called mining , that secures the bitcoin blockchain. Mining consumes large quantities of electricity and has been criticized for its environmental impact . Based on
4300-580: Is the main justification behind bitcoin bans. As of November 2021 , nine countries applied an absolute ban (Algeria, Bangladesh, China, Egypt, Iraq, Morocco, Nepal, Qatar, and Tunisia) while another 42 countries had an implicit ban. Bitcoin is only legal tender in El Salvador . As of 2018 , bitcoin is rarely used in transactions with merchants, but it is popular to purchase illegal goods online. Prices are not usually quoted in bitcoin and trades involve conversions into fiat currencies. Commonly cited reasons for not using bitcoin include high costs,
4400-608: The Journal of Monetary Economics concluded that price manipulation occurred during the Mt. Gox bitcoin theft and that the market remained vulnerable to manipulation. Research published in The Journal of Finance also suggested that trading associated with increases in the amount of the Tether cryptocurrency and associated trading at the Bitfinex exchange accounted for about half of
4500-510: The Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary use the capitalized and lowercase variants without distinction. One bitcoin is divisible to eight decimal places. Units for smaller amounts of bitcoin are the millibitcoin (mBTC), equal to 1 ⁄ 1000 bitcoin, and the satoshi (sat), representing 1 ⁄ 100 000 000 (one hundred millionth) bitcoin, the smallest amount possible. 100,000 satoshis are one mBTC. As
4600-510: The Central Bank of Iran , allowing the central bank to use it for imports. Some constituent states also accept tax payments in bitcoin, including Colorado ( US ) and Zug ( Switzerland ). As of 2023, the US government owned more than $ 5 billion worth of seized bitcoin. As of 2018 , the overwhelming majority of bitcoin transactions took place on cryptocurrency exchanges . Since 2014, regulated bitcoin funds also allow exposure to
4700-538: The European Central Bank , the decentralization of money offered by bitcoin has its theoretical roots in the Austrian school of economics , especially with Friedrich Hayek 's The Denationalisation of Money , in which he advocates a complete free market in the production, distribution and management of money to end the monopoly of central banks . Sociologist Nigel Dodd argues that the essence of
4800-481: The Legislative Assembly had voted 62–22 to pass a bill submitted by President Nayib Bukele classifying the cryptocurrency as such. In August 2021, Cuba followed with Resolution 215 to recognize and regulate cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin. In September 2021, the government of China , the single largest market for cryptocurrency, declared all cryptocurrency transactions illegal. This completed
4900-682: The National Security Agency published a paper entitled How to Make a Mint: The Cryptography of Anonymous Electronic Cash , describing a cryptocurrency system. The paper was first published in an MIT mailing list (October 1996) and later (April 1997) in The American Law Review . In 1998, Wei Dai described "b-money," an anonymous, distributed electronic cash system. Shortly thereafter, Nick Szabo described bit gold . Like bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies that would follow it, bit gold (not to be confused with
5000-698: 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. In August 2017, the SegWit software upgrade was activated. Segwit was intended to support the Lightning Network as well as improve scalability . SegWit opponents, who supported larger blocks as a scalability solution, forked to create Bitcoin Cash , one of many forks of bitcoin . In December 2017,
5100-429: The hashing power , it would allow them to censor transactions and double-spend coins. In 2014, mining pool Ghash.io reached 51% mining power, causing safety concerns, but later voluntarily capped its power at 39.99% for the benefit of the whole network. A few entities also dominate other parts of the ecosystem such as the client software, online wallets, and simplified payment verification (SPV) clients. According to
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#17327978122575200-648: The "character and direction" of the city. In 2021, Kazakhstan became the second-biggest crypto-currency mining country, producing 18.1% of the global exahash rate. The country built a compound containing 50,000 computers near Ekibastuz . An increase in cryptocurrency mining increased the demand for graphics cards (GPU) in 2017. The computing power of GPUs makes them well-suited to generating hashes. Popular favorites of cryptocurrency miners, such as Nvidia's GTX 1060 and GTX 1070 graphics cards, as well as AMD's RX 570 and RX 580 GPUs, doubled or tripled in price – or were out of stock. A GTX 1070 Ti, which
5300-560: The 2010s as alternative cryptocurrencies, or, "altcoins". Sometimes the term "alt coins" was used, or disparagingly, "shitcoins". Paul Vigna of The Wall Street Journal described altcoins in 2020 as "alternative versions of Bitcoin" given its role as the model protocol for cryptocurrency designers. A Polytechnic University of Catalonia thesis in 2021 used a broader description, including not only alternative versions of bitcoin but every cryptocurrency other than bitcoin. "As of early 2020, there were more than 5,000 cryptocurrencies. Altcoin
5400-491: The German region, said: "Gamers come first for Nvidia." Numerous companies developed dedicated crypto-mining accelerator chips, capable of price-performance far higher than that of CPU or GPU mining . At one point, Intel marketed its own brand of crypto accelerator chip, named Blockscale . A cryptocurrency wallet is a means of storing the public and private "keys" (address) or seed, which can be used to receive or spend
5500-531: The UK announced its Treasury had commissioned a study of cryptocurrencies and what role, if any, they could play in the UK economy. The study was also to report on whether regulation should be considered. Its final report was published in 2018, and it issued a consultation on cryptoassets and stablecoins in January 2021. In June 2021, El Salvador became the first country to accept bitcoin as legal tender , after
5600-637: 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 services businesses , subject to registration and other legal obligations. In May 2013, US authorities seized the unregistered exchange Mt. Gox . In June 2013, the US Drug Enforcement Administration seized ₿11.02 from
5700-566: The anonymity techniques are not sufficient safeguards. In order to improve privacy, researchers suggested several different ideas, including new cryptographic schemes and mechanisms for hiding the IP address of the source. Cryptocurrencies are used primarily outside banking and governmental institutions and are exchanged over the Internet. Bitcoin Bitcoin (abbreviation: BTC ; sign : ₿ )
5800-534: The asset or to futures as an investment. Bitcoin is used as a store of value : individuals and companies such as the Winklevoss twins and Elon Musk 's companies SpaceX and Tesla have massively invested in bitcoin. Bitcoin wealth is highly concentrated, with 0.01% holding 27% of in-circulation currency, as of 2021. As of September 2023 , El Salvador had $ 76.5 million worth of bitcoin in its international reserves . In 2018, research published in
5900-442: The attention of regulators, leading to its ban by several countries as of 2021 . Before bitcoin, several digital cash technologies were released, starting with David Chaum 's ecash in the 1980s. The idea that solutions to computational puzzles could have some value was first proposed by cryptographers Cynthia Dwork and Moni Naor in 1992. The concept was independently rediscovered by Adam Back who developed Hashcash ,
6000-440: The basis of bitcoin's consensus mechanism . The difficulty of generating a block is deterministically adjusted based on the mining power on the network by changing the difficulty target, which is recalibrated every 2,016 blocks (approximately two weeks) to maintain an average time of ten minutes between new blocks. The process requires significant computational power and specialized hardware . Miners who successfully find
6100-528: The bitcoin ideology is to remove money from social, as well as governmental, control. 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". These philosophical ideas initially attracted libertarians and anarchists . Economist Paul Krugman argues that cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are only used by bank skeptics and criminals. Money serves three purposes:
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#17327978122576200-561: The bitcoins, with no other proof of ownership accepted by the protocol . For instance, in 2013, a user lost ₿7,500, valued at US$ 7.5 million, by accidentally discarding a hard drive with the private key. It is estimated that around 20% of all bitcoins are lost. The private key must also be kept secret as its exposure, such as through a data breach , can lead to theft of the associated bitcoins. As of December 2017 , approximately ₿980,000 had been stolen from cryptocurrency exchanges . The mining process in bitcoin involves maintaining
6300-423: The block size to one megabyte . The limited block size and frequency can lead to delayed processing of transactions, increased fees and a bitcoin scalability problem . The Lightning Network , second-layer routing network, is a potential scaling solution. Research shows a trend towards centralization in bitcoin as miners join pools for stable income. If a single miner or pool controls more than 50% of
6400-402: The blockchain across all nodes without central oversight. This process tracks bitcoin spending, ensuring each bitcoin is spent only once . Unlike a traditional ledger that tracks physical currency, bitcoins exist digitally as unspent outputs of transactions . In the blockchain, bitcoins are linked to specific addresses that are hashes of a public key . Creating an address involves generating
6500-454: The blockchain through computer processing power . Miners group and broadcast new transactions into blocks, which are then verified by the network. Each block must contain a proof of work (PoW) to be accepted, involving finding a nonce number that, combined with the block content, produces a hash numerically smaller than the network's difficulty target . This PoW is simple to verify but hard to generate, requiring many attempts. PoW forms
6600-420: The blockchain. Still, cryptocurrency exchanges are often required by law to collect the personal information of their users. Some cryptocurrencies, such as Monero , Zerocoin , Zerocash , and CryptoNote , implement additional measures to increase privacy, such as by using zero-knowledge proofs . A recent 2020 study presented different attacks on privacy in cryptocurrencies. The attacks demonstrated how
6700-776: The chain, known as the genesis block . Embedded in this block was the text "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks ", which is the date and headline of an issue of The Times newspaper. Nine days later, Hal Finney received the first bitcoin transaction: ten bitcoins from Nakamoto. Wei Dai and Nick Szabo were also early supporters. On May 22, 2010, the first known commercial transaction using bitcoin occurred when programmer Laszlo Hanyecz bought two Papa John's pizzas for ₿10,000, in what would later be celebrated as "Bitcoin Pizza Day". Blockchain analysts estimate that Nakamoto had mined about one million bitcoins before disappearing in 2010 when he handed
6800-603: The cryptocurrency ecosystem that "everything...needs to improve dramatically in terms of user experience, controls, safety, customer service." According to Jan Lansky, a cryptocurrency is a system that meets six conditions: In March 2018, the word cryptocurrency was added to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary . After the early innovation of bitcoin in 2008 and the early network effect gained by bitcoin, tokens, cryptocurrencies, and other digital assets that were not bitcoin became collectively known during
6900-476: The cryptocurrency. With the private key, it is possible to write in the public ledger, effectively spending the associated cryptocurrency. With the public key, it is possible for others to send currency to the wallet. There exist multiple methods of storing keys or seed in a wallet. These methods range from using paper wallets (which are public, private, or seed keys written on paper), to using hardware wallets (which are hardware to store your wallet information), to
7000-635: The e-waste generated, is comparable to that of Greece and the Netherlands, respectively. Bitcoin is pseudonymous , with funds linked to addresses, not real-world identities. While the owners of these addresses are not directly identified, all transactions are public on the blockchain. Patterns of use, like spending coins from multiple inputs, can hint at a common owner. Public data can sometimes be matched with known address owners. Bitcoin exchanges might also need to collect personal data as per legal requirements. For enhanced privacy , users can generate
7100-513: The expected regulatory framework for stablecoins in 2023/24 is being shaped and includes a few considerations. Memecoins are a category of cryptocurrencies that originated from Internet memes or jokes. The most notable example is Dogecoin , a memecoin featuring the Shiba Inu dog from the Doge meme. Memecoins are known for extreme volatility; for example, the record-high value for a Dogecoin
7200-578: The first cryptocurrency wallets , enabling users to store the information necessary to transact bitcoins. The first wallet program, simply named Bitcoin , and sometimes referred to as the Satoshi client , was released in 2009 by Nakamoto as open-source software . Bitcoin Core is among the best known clients . Forks of Bitcoin Core exist such as Bitcoin Unlimited . Wallets can be full clients, with
7300-750: The first futures on bitcoin was introduced by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME). In February 2018, the price crashed after China imposed a complete ban on bitcoin trading. The percentage of bitcoin trading in the Chinese renminbi fell from over 90% in September 2017 to less than 1% in June 2018. During the same year, bitcoin prices were negatively affected by several hacks or thefts from cryptocurrency exchanges. In 2020, some major companies and institutions started to acquire bitcoin: MicroStrategy invested $ 250 million in bitcoin as
7400-422: The greatest amount of effort to produce. To tamper or censor the ledger, one needs to control the majority of the global hashrate . The high cost required to reach this level of computational power secures the bitcoin blockchain. Bitcoin mining's environmental impact is controversial and has attracted the attention of regulators, leading to restrictions or incentives in various jurisdictions . As of 2022 ,
7500-509: The inability to process chargebacks , high price volatility , long transaction times, and transaction fees (especially for small purchases). Bloomberg reported that bitcoin was being used for large-item purchases on the site Overstock.com and for cross-border payments to freelancers . As of 2015 , there was little sign of bitcoin use in international remittances despite high fees charged by banks and Western Union who compete in this market. Despite associated risks and costs, in 2022,
7600-406: The later gold-based exchange BitGold) was described as an electronic currency system that required users to complete a proof of work function with solutions being cryptographically put together and published. In January 2009, bitcoin was created by pseudonymous developer Satoshi Nakamoto . It used SHA-256 , a cryptographic hash function, in its proof-of-work scheme. In April 2011, Namecoin
7700-733: The network alert key and control of the code repository over to Gavin Andresen . Andresen later became lead developer at the Bitcoin Foundation , an organization founded in September 2012 to promote bitcoin. After early " proof-of-concept " transactions, the first major users of bitcoin were black markets , such as the dark web 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. In March 2013,
7800-402: The network using the public key, keeping the private key secret. Bitcoin transactions use a Forth -like scripting language , involving one or more inputs and outputs. When sending bitcoins, a user specifies the recipients' addresses and the amount for each output. This allows sending bitcoins to several recipients in a single transaction. To prevent double-spending, each input must refer to
7900-440: The previous block, chaining them in chronological order. The blockchain is maintained by a peer-to-peer network. Individual blocks, public addresses, and transactions within blocks are public information, and can be examined using a blockchain explorer. Nodes validate and broadcast transactions, each maintaining a copy of the blockchain for ownership verification. A new block is created every 10 minutes on average, updating
8000-601: The price increase in bitcoin in late 2017. Bitcoin, along with other cryptocurrencies, has been described as an economic bubble by several economists, including Nobel Prize in Economics laureates, such as Joseph Stiglitz , James Heckman , and Paul Krugman . Another recipient of the prize, Robert Shiller , argues that bitcoin is rather a fad that may become an asset class . He describes its price growth as an "epidemic", driven by contagious narratives . In 2024, Jean Tirole , also Nobel laureate, described bitcoin as
8100-646: 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. The legal status of bitcoin varies substantially from one jurisdiction to another. Because of its decentralized nature and its global presence, regulating bitcoin
8200-517: The production of that currency, placing a cap on the total amount of that currency that will ever be in circulation. Compared with ordinary currencies held by financial institutions or kept as cash on hand, cryptocurrencies can be more difficult for seizure by law enforcement. The validity of each cryptocurrency's coins is provided by a blockchain . A blockchain is a continuously growing list of records , called blocks , which are linked and secured using cryptography. Each block typically contains
8300-401: The provincial government to allocate 500 megawatts of power to crypto companies for mining. According to a February 2018 report from Fortune , Iceland has become a haven for cryptocurrency miners in part because of its cheap electricity. In March 2018, the city of Plattsburgh, New York put an 18-month moratorium on all cryptocurrency mining in an effort to preserve natural resources and
8400-402: The reward for finding a hash has diminished and often does not justify the investment in equipment and cooling facilities (to mitigate the heat the equipment produces) and the electricity required to run them. Popular regions for mining include those with inexpensive electricity, a cold climate, and jurisdictions with clear and conducive regulations. By July 2019, bitcoin's electricity consumption
8500-495: The same entity". Shortly after the XRPL was launched, McCaleb, Britto and Chris Larsen founded the company Open Coin in September 2012 to operate on the ledger. On September 26, 2013, OpenCoin officially changed its name to Ripple Labs, Inc. Unlike many cryptocurrencies, XRP was pre-mined, with 100 billion tokens created at inception. The XRPL founders gifted 80 billion XRP, the platform’s native currency, to Ripple Labs. Ripple Labs holds
8600-449: The supply of currency. In the case of cryptocurrency, companies or governments cannot produce new units and have not so far provided backing for other firms, banks, or corporate entities that hold asset value measured in it. The underlying technical system upon which cryptocurrencies are based was created by Satoshi Nakamoto . Within a proof-of-work system such as bitcoin, the safety, integrity, and balance of ledgers are maintained by
8700-448: The transaction using encryption to other nodes throughout the node network so that the transaction (and every other transaction) is known. Node owners are either volunteers, those hosted by the organization or body responsible for developing the cryptocurrency blockchain network technology, or those who are enticed to host a node to receive rewards from hosting the node network. Cryptocurrencies use various timestamping schemes to "prove"
8800-407: The transaction's size and the amount of data stored, measured in satoshis per byte. The proof of work system and the chaining of blocks make blockchain modifications very difficult, as altering one block requires changing all subsequent blocks. As more blocks are added, modifying older blocks becomes increasingly challenging. In case of disagreement, nodes trust the longest chain, which required
8900-708: The use of Bitcoin in El Salvador remains low: 80% of businesses refused to accept it despite being legally required to. In April 2022, the Central African Republic (CAR) adopted bitcoin as legal tender alongside the CFA franc , but repealed the reform one year later. Bitcoin is also used by some governments. For instance, the Iranian government initially opposed cryptocurrencies, but later saw them as an opportunity to circumvent sanctions . Since 2020, Iran has required local bitcoin miners to sell bitcoin to
9000-441: The validity of transactions added to the blockchain ledger without the need for a trusted third party. The first timestamping scheme invented was the proof-of-work scheme. The most widely used proof-of-work schemes are based on SHA-256 and scrypt . Some other hashing algorithms that are used for proof-of-work include CryptoNote , Blake , SHA-3 , and X11 . Another method is called the proof-of-stake scheme. Proof-of-stake
9100-513: Was 73 cents, but that had plunged to 13 cents by mid-2024. Scams are prolific among memecoins. Physical cryptocurrency coins have been made as promotional items and some have become collectibles. Some of these have a private key embedded in them to access crypto worth a few dollars. There have also been attempts to issue bitcoin “bank notes”. The term “physical bitcoin” is used in the finance industry when investment funds that hold crypto purchased from crypto exchanges put their crypto holdings in
9200-505: Was created as an attempt at forming a decentralized DNS . In October 2011, Litecoin was released, which used scrypt as its hash function instead of SHA-256. Peercoin , created in August 2012, used a hybrid of proof-of-work and proof-of-stake . Cryptocurrency has undergone several periods of growth and retraction, including several bubbles and market crashes, such as in 2011, 2013–2014/15, 2017–2018, and 2021–2023. On 6 August 2014,
9300-406: Was estimated to be approximately 7 gigawatts, around 0.2% of the global total, or equivalent to the energy consumed nationally by Switzerland. Some miners pool resources , sharing their processing power over a network to split the reward equally, according to the amount of work they contributed to the probability of finding a block . A "share" is awarded to members of the mining pool who present
9400-560: Was introduced in 2009. Mining is measured by hash rate , typically in TH/s. A 2023 IMF working paper found that crypto mining could generate 450 million tons of CO 2 emissions by 2027, accounting for 0.7 percent of global emissions, or 1.2 percent of the world total With more people entering the world of virtual currency, generating hashes for validation has become more complex over time, forcing miners to invest increasingly large sums of money to improve computing performance. Consequently,
9500-613: Was less volatile than oil , silver , US Treasuries , and 190 stocks in the S&;P 500 during and after the 2020 stock market crash . The term hodl was created in December 2013 for holding bitcoin rather than selling it during periods of volatility. Economists, investors, and the central bank of Estonia have described bitcoin as a potential Ponzi scheme . Legal scholar Eric Posner disagrees, however, as "a real Ponzi scheme takes fraud; bitcoin, by contrast, seems more like
9600-578: Was originally called "Ripple", the unique consensus ledger was called the Ripple Consensus Ledger, the transaction protocol was called the Ripple Transaction Protocol or RTXP and the digital asset (known as "ripples") using XRP as the three-letter currency code to follow the naming convention of BTC for Bitcoin. The "XRP Ledger Consensus Protocol" was formally established in 2012. In May 2018, Ashton Kutcher gifted
9700-502: Was registered on 18 August 2008. On 31 October 2008, a link to a white 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. According to computer scientist Arvind Narayanan , all individual components of bitcoin originated in earlier academic literature. Nakamoto's innovation
9800-524: Was released at a price of $ 450, sold for as much as $ 1,100. Another popular card, the GTX 1060 (6 GB model), was released at an MSRP of $ 250 and sold for almost $ 500. RX 570 and RX 580 cards from AMD were out of stock for almost a year. Miners regularly buy up the entire stock of new GPUs as soon as they are available. Nvidia has asked retailers to do what they can when it comes to selling GPUs to gamers instead of miners. Boris Böhles, PR manager for Nvidia in
9900-474: Was the most used blockchain in 2020, according to Bloomberg News. In 2016, it had the largest "following" of any altcoin, according to the New York Times . Significant market price rallies across multiple altcoin markets are often referred to as an "altseason". Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies designed to maintain a stable level of purchasing power . Notably, these designs are not foolproof, as
10000-406: Was their complex interplay resulting in the first decentralized, Sybil resistant, Byzantine fault tolerant digital cash system, that would eventually be referred to as the first blockchain. Nakamoto's paper was not peer reviewed and was initially ignored by academics, who argued that it could not work. On 3 January 2009, the bitcoin network was created when Nakamoto mined the starting block of
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