About

Bitcoin is the first distributed, consensus-based, censorship-resistant, permissionless, peer-to-peer payment settlement network with a provably scarce, programmable, native currency. The Bitcoin network is an emergent decentralized monetary institution that exists through the interplay of full nodes, miners, and developers. Furthermore, it is set by a social contract created and opted into by the network’s users, which is hardened through game theory and cryptography.

History

On Oct. 31, 2008, at the peak of the Global Financial Crisis and just six weeks after the infamous Lehman Brothers investment bank declared bankruptcy, the pseudonymous ”Satoshi Nakamoto” released the Bitcoin whitepaper titled "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System,” to the cryptography mailing list. The whitepaper proposed a new electronic cash system allowing peer-to-peer online payments without reliance on trusted third parties. Soon after the release of the whitepaper, Satoshi implemented the Bitcoin software as open-source code.

On Jan. 3, 2009, Bitcoin was created when Satoshi Nakamoto mined the genesis block. This first block included a reference to a headline from "The Times," which read “Chancellor on the Brink of Second Bailout for Banks” and has been interpreted as a political statement about the global financial system. The event marked the birth of the world's first non-sovereign, decentralized digital money.

In August 2010, a vulnerability was discovered in the network that allowed for an overflow in the value of transactions. This led to a user being able to create 184.00 billion BTC, which, at the time, was over 49,000.00 times the total number of BTC in existence. Developers fixed the issue by updating the Bitcoin software to a new version with a limit on the maximum value of a single transaction. Additionally, extra coins created during the incident were reverted.

In December 2010, Satoshi Nakamoto transferred control of the source code repository and network alert key to Gavin Andresen, a contributing developer. This transition marked Satoshi's withdrawal from active participation in Bitcoin's development, shifting the project towards a more decentralized and collaborative process. Based on a commercially reasonable search, the reasons for this withdrawal are not documented, and Satoshi's identity remains unknown.

In March 2013, a software bug in Bitcoin Core v0.8 caused a blockchain split after a miner created a large block (height 225,430). The split resulted in a reorganization of 24 blocks, with over 5,000.00 transactions being affected. The issue was resolved by miners downgrading to the v0.7 blockchain.

In August 2017, the SegWit (Segregated Witness) upgrade changed how data was stored on the Bitcoin blockchain. By separating signature data (witness data) from transaction data, SegWit allows more transactions to be stored in each block, increasing the network’s capacity. In addition, SegWit allows new transaction types to be added, such as the Lightning Network, a Layer-2 scaling solution that enables offchain micropayments with reduced fees.

Another soft fork, the Taproot upgrade, was activated on Nov. 14, 2021. Taproot introduced Schnorr signatures to Bitcoin, enabling the aggregation of multiple and complex signatures, such as multi-sig wallets, to be verified in batches instead of individually. In addition to providing a more efficient method for processing transactions, Schnorr signatures enhance privacy by obscuring the distinction between multi-sig and single-sig transactions. The upgrade included implementing three Bitcoin Improvement Proposals (BIPs): BIP-340, BIP-341, and BIP-342.

Combined with SegWit, Taproot’s advanced scripting feature has facilitated the development of inscriptions, a method of embedding arbitrary data, such as images or text, within the witness data of a transaction on Bitcoin. Inscriptions can be used for various applications, including digital art, collectibles, tokenized real-world assets, and the creation of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) when combined with an NFT protocol, such as Ordinals.

Bitcoin block rewards are subject to a concept called “halving” and have since decreased to 3.125 BTC per block as of April 19, 2024. Halving refers to the decreasing rate of Bitcoin’s inflation. For every 210,000.00 blocks mined (roughly four years), the reward of newly minted BTC decreases by half. Rewards will decrease until the maximum supply of 21.00 million BTC is mined around 2140. The most recent halving event occurred on April 19, 2024, at block 840,000.00.

Since early 2025, Digital Asset Treasuries (DATs) have become a core institutional mechanism for Bitcoin accumulation and balance-sheet integration, transforming the way corporations interact with crypto assets.

On March 6, 2025, Donald J. Trump signed an executive order titled “Establishment of the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and United States Digital Asset Stockpile,” directing the U.S. Treasury to establish a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve capitalized with BTC held by the U.S. government through criminal or civil forfeitures. The order mandated that these holdings “shall not be sold” but retained as a long-term strategic asset. (White House).

By late 2025, DAT companies increased dramatically, acting as on-balance-sheet Bitcoin exposure vehicles for corporations. Some of the biggest DATs such as MicroStrategy (now Strategy), Metaplanet Japan, among a few European firms already hold hundreds of thousands of BTC as part of structured capital strategies.

In September 2025, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission introduced new generic listing standards for digital asset ETFs. These rules allow exchanges to list spot Bitcoin and other crypto ETFs without prior case-by-case approval, reducing timelines from roughly 270 days to about 75 days.