El Bitcoin (BTC) is the first cryptocurrency which was developed and also the first and only application based on blockchain technology that works 24/7 365 days a year since 2009. But what is Bitcoin really? Bitcoin is a software, a protocol and a currency.
These three characteristics allow one of the applications of Bitcoin to be that of forming a global, transparent, open source, and single currency based payment network.
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The Beginnings of Bitcoin
The currency was devised as a decentralized economic system open to all, which proposed to its users a monetary and exchange system of value better than the current fiat money system. The value of this coin depends on user trust and it is not controlled or regulated by any bank, which is why its value is so volatile. One of the great peculiarities of Bitcoin is that its creator is unknown.
On October 31, 2008 appears a peer-2-peer (user-to-user) money proposal that was based on crypto and in something called blockchain.
Another great particularity of Bitcoin is that for the first time in history there is a form of money that is created, distributed and custody through a computer network that anyone can join and among all of them they currently constitute the computer with the most computing power on the planet.
The pace of bitcoin coin creation is constant and well known due to the open nature of your software code. Thanks to the knowledge of these data, it can be estimated that in 2140 the last existing Bitcoin would be mined, that the difficulty for the creation of bitcoins will increase in the same way that the reward for the creation of bitcoins will go decreasing every 210.000 mined blocks.
According to Bitcoin whitepaper, each block of this cryptocurrency is created every ten minutes and contains all the transactions made during that period of time. Because it is the first cryptocurrency developed on the market, it is the one used as a reference value.
What currencies can be exchanged for Bitcoin?
All the cryptocurrencies in the market have a change to bitcoin, since it is the first that has a proven utility and has established itself as the reference token. In turn, bitcoin can be exchanged for any commonly used currency, although the dollar is normally used as a reference, followed by the euro.
The basis of Bitcoin is the direct exchange between users. The validation of the transactions that they carry out is carried out by mining this cryptocurrency using an algorithm called Proof-of-Work (PoW).
There are many stores, both physical and digital, that support payment via BTC, as it has been established as the main currency for payments. The first known payment for a good or service in history It was done on May 22, 2010, when a programmer paid for two pizzas a total of 10.000 BTC, which at the time was about $ 80, but today would be equivalent to about $ 80 million.
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