Would you like to know what Bitcoin is? If you are new to the world of cryptocurrencies or simply want to better understand this phenomenon, here we will give you the most important details to know about Bitcoin.
What is Bitcoin?
Bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency, so it is not backed by any government or central bank.
This Cryptocurrency allows a new peer to peer payment system that is carried out through its blockchain, where all its transactions are verified by nodes through cryptography.
Some of its features are:
-Decentralization.
-Anonymous.
-Volatility.
-Cannot be duplicated or falsified.
-There are no intermediaries, which allows direct transactions between users.
-The number of units cannot exceed 21 million Bitcoins.
Who was its creator?
The creator of Bitcoin is known by the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, but his identity is still unknown at this time.
There have been several people who were suspected of being, such as Dorian Nakamoto, Craig Wright, Nick Szabo or Hal Finney.
When it was created?
On October 31, 2008, the Bitcoin white paper was published on a crypto list hosted on Netzdow.
This document explained the operation of a tool for carrying out peer to peer (P2P) electronic payments without having any type of intermediaries for the transactions to occur.
In this way, a new, transparent and reliable financial system could be built, moving away from the disasters caused by the mortgage crisis of that time.
It was on January 3, 2009 when the Bitcoin network exited, creating the first block, called Genesis.
Since then this cryptocurrency has not stopped growing, creating great expectations for many people and companies.
How many Bitcoins exist and how many will there be?
The system is designed so that there is a maximum total of 21 million Bitcoins, of which about 19,530,000 have already been mined.
What is Bitcoin mining?
Bitcoin mining is the process of validating transactions through a set of mathematical processes carried out by computers, which execute complex mathematical operations.
The Bitcoin mining schedule is one block every ten minutes, with a halving of the reward for miners occurring every 210,000 blocks. Which is approximately every four years. This is known as halving.
Therefore, the completion of the mining of this digital currency will be approximately in the year 2140.
At the end of this time the network will be autonomous enough to not have to reward the creation of Bitcoin.
Therefore the miners will receive the rewards of the transaction fees.
These miners use Proof of Work (POW) which is a consensus protocol that uses blockchain technology.
This technology requires difficult and expensive computational work to be carried out in terms of time and resources, but once carried out it must be easily verified by other users on the network.
Proof of work gives the blockchain security, since it is very difficult and expensive for an attacker to modify the transaction history.
Bitcoin Evolution.
As can be seen in the following table, the issuance of Bitcoin since its creation has been decreasing each halving and will continue to do so until it reaches the maximum figure of 21 million.
During the first four years, a total of 10.5 million Bitcoins were issued, with a reward for miners of 50 Bitcoins per block.
HALVING | BLOCK | REWARD | BITCOIN INTRODUCED | YEAR |
0 | 0 | 50 | 10500000,00000000 | 2008 |
1 | 210000 | 25 | 5250000,00000000 | 2012 |
2 | 420000 | 12,5 | 2625000,00000000 | 2016 |
3 | 630000 | 6,25 | 1312500,00000000 | 2020 |
4 | 840000 | 3,125 | 656250,00000000 | 2024 |
5 | 1050000 | 1,5625 | 32815,00000000 | 2028 |
10 | 2100000 | 0,04882813 | 10253,90625000 | 2048 |
15 | 3150000 | 0,00152588 | 320,43457031 | 2068 |
20 | 4200000 | 0,00004768 | 10,01358032 | 2088 |
25 | 5200000 | 0,00000149 | 0,31292439 | 2108 |
30 | 6300000 | 0,00000005 | 0,00977889 | 2128 |
34 | 7300000 | 0,00000000 | 0,00061118 | 2144 |
This has been a brief review of what Bitcoin is. At N&P we encourage you to continue studying and researching this fascinating world of technology that has come to change the economy and that is little by little making a name for itself among large companies.
If you have any questions you can contact us through our website.