Bitcoin

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Bitcoin

• world's largest government holders: America (198,022 bitcoins: from high-profile law enforcement seizures like Silk Road and other dark web marketplaces) and China (190,000 bitcoins: from confiscated mining and fraud cases); Source: Visual Capitalist

• 63% of total crypto market's value; Source: Visual Capitalist

• Bitcoin price reached an all-time high (July 2025): surpassed $120,000 mark; Source: Forbes

• blockchain: backbone of cryptocurrency; decentralized ledger of transactions (secure, transparent, unchanging): replicated and distributed across computer system network; allows anyone with internet access to financially transact; Source: U.S. News & World Report

• Bitcoin is supported by an underlying blockchain that records every Bitcoin transaction in a public, decentralized, and distributed ledger; every time bitcoins are spent, a digital transaction record must be validated and added to the blockchain; minders undertake this task, legitimizing and auditing Bitcoin transactions while earning bitcoins as a reward; Source: Visual Capitalist 

• Bitcoin: is the world’s largest digital currency/largest cryptocurrency by market value; the total number of Bitcoin is capped at 21 million; it was released in 2009 by its anonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto as an open-source software project; it is not controlled by a single entity but is created by users who generate new bitcoins when they use their computing power to verify and process Bitcoin transactions (“mining”); Source: Bloomberg and WSJ and Economics of Money, Banking, and Financial Markets and Bloomberg and Business Insider and Statista 

• Bitcoin (publicly launched in 2009) is a decentralized digital currency that you can buy, sell, and exchange directly, without an intermediary like a bank; each and every Bitcoin transaction that’s ever been made exists on a public ledger accessible to everyone, making transactions hard to reverse and difficult to fake; that’s by design: core to their decentralized nature, Bitcoins aren’t backed by the government or any issuing institution, and there’s nothing to guarantee their value besides the proof baked in the heart of the system; because its supply is limited to 21 million coins, many expect its price to only keep rising as time goes on, especially as more large, institutional investors begin treating it as a sort of digital gold to hedge against market volatility and inflation; Bitcoin is built on a distributed digital record called a blockchain (a linked body of data, made up of units called blocks that contain information about each and every transaction, including date and time, total value, buyer and seller, and a unique identifying code for each exchange - entries are strung together in chronological order, creating a digital chain of blocks); Bitcoin mining: process of adding new transactions to the Bitcoin blockchain; people who choose to mine Bitcoin use a process called proof of work, deploying computers in a race to solve mathematical puzzles that verify transactions; the Bitcoin code is written to make solving its puzzles more and more challenging over time, requiring more and more computing resources; today, Bitcoin mining requires powerful computers and access to massive amounts of cheap electricity to be successful; how to use Bitcoin: in the U.S., people generally use Bitcoin as an alternative investment, helping diversify a portfolio apart from stocks and bonds; how to buy Bitcoin: most people buy Bitcoin via exchanges, such as Coinbase; Source: Forbes 

• bitcoin mining is a power-intensive process that updates the ledger of Bitcoin transactions; Source: Visual Capitalist 

• Bitcoin is a deflationary asset: has a limited supply of 21 million coins and each new token gets more expensive (since the reward for miners halves every 4 years; Source: Fortune

  • MicroStrategy: largest corporate owner of Bitcoin: 2% of cryptocurrency's existing supply; Source: Visual Capitalist

  • $2 trillion value: all Bitcoin coins in circulation: (December 2024 price of a single Bitcoin: $100,000); Source: NYT

  • Satoshi Nakamoto created digital coin Bitcoin in 2009 using blockchain technology: miners helped run a transparent public ledger where everyone could observe transactions; Source: Fortune