The live Bitcoin price today is $24,086.71 USD with a 24-hour trading volume of $23,771,434,947 USD. The current CoinMarketCap ranking is #1, with a live market cap of $460,438,957,560 USD.
What Is Bitcoin (BTC)?
Bitcoin is a decentralized cryptocurrency originally described in a 2008 whitepaper by a person, or group of people, using the alias Satoshi Nakamoto
- Peer-to-peer online currency, meaning that all transactions happen directly between equal, independent network participants, without the need for any intermediary to permit or facilitate them.
How Much Bitcoin Is in Circulation?
Bitcoin’s total supply is limited by its software and will never exceed 21,000,000 coins.
- New coins are created during the process known as “mining”
- As transactions are relayed across the network, they get picked up by miners and packaged into blocks, which are in turn protected by complex cryptographic calculations
- Miners receive rewards for every block that they successfully add to the blockchain
What Is Bitcoin’s Role as a Store of Value?
Bitcoin is the first decentralized, peer-to-peer digital currency
- One of its most important functions is that it is used as a decentralized store of value
- The smallest units of Bitcoin, 0.00000001 BTC, are called Satoshis
- At Bitcoin price now, 1 Satoshi is equivalent to roughly $0.00048
What is the Lightning Network?
The Lightning Network is an off-chain payment protocol that operates bidirectional payment channels which allows instantaneous transfer with instant reconciliation.
Who are the Founders of Bitcoin?
The original inventor of Bitcoin is known as Satoshi Nakamoto, but his true identity remains unknown.
- Bitcoin price was $0 when first introduced, and most Bitcoins were obtained via mining, which only required moderately powerful devices (e.g. PCs) and mining software.
How Much Is Bitcoin?
The current valuation of Bitcoin is constantly moving, all day every day.
What Makes Bitcoin Unique
Bitcoin’s most unique advantage comes from the fact that it was the very first cryptocurrency to appear on the market.
- It has managed to create a global community and give birth to an entirely new industry of millions of enthusiasts who create, invest, trade, and use Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in their everyday lives.
What Is Taproot?
Taproot is a soft fork that bundles together BIP 340, 341, and 342 and aims to improve the scalability, efficiency, and privacy of the blockchain by introducing several new features
- The two major changes are the introduction of the Merkelized Abstract Syntax Tree (MAST) and Schnorr Signature
- MAST introduces a condition allowing the sender and recipient of a transaction to sign off on its settlement together
Is Bitcoin Political?
Bitcoin is becoming more political by the day, particularly after El Salvador began accepting it as legal tender
- President Nayib Bukele announced and implemented the decision almost unilaterally, dismissing criticism from his citizens, the Bank of England, the IMF, Vitalik Buterin and many others.
Where Can You Buy Bitcoin (BTC)?
Bitcoin is synonymous with cryptocurrency, which means that you can buy Bitcoin on virtually every crypto exchange.
Bitcoin Energy Consumption
A report found that each Bitcoin transaction takes 1,173 KW hours of electricity, which can “power the typical American home for six weeks.”
- At present, miners are heavily reliant on renewable energy sources.
- Critics claim that increasing Bitcoin’s renewable energy usage will take away from solar sources powering other sectors and industries like hospitals, factories or homes.
Crypto Wallets
The most popular crypto wallets include both hot and cold wallets.
- Hot wallets are able to be connected to the web, while cold wallets are used for keeping large amounts of coins outside of the internet
- Top crypto cold wallets include Trezor, Ledger, and CoolBitX
- Some of the top crypto hot wallets include Exodus, Electrum and Mycelium
How Is Bitcoin’s Technology Upgraded?
A hard fork is a radical change to the protocol that makes previously invalid blocks/transactions valid, and therefore requires all users to upgrade.
- This means every node on the Bitcoin network needs to upgrade before the new blockchain with the hard fork activates and rejects any blocks or transactions from the old blockchain. The old blockchain will continue to exist and accept transactions.
