Bitcoin (₿) is a decentralized digital form of cash. Unlike traditional fiat currencies, there are no central banks or single administrators that took control of them. Instead, the financial system is run by thousands of computers around the world, verified by network nodes by cryptography, and recorded in a public distributed ledger called a Blockchain.
Bitcoin was invented in 2008 by Satoshi Nakamoto, an unknown person or group of people from somewhere on the earth. Bitcoins are created as a reward for a process known as mining, where miners can exchange them for other currencies, products, and services. Due to its characteristics of being decentralized, censorship-resistant, secure and borderless, Bitcoin appeals for many use cases such as international remittance and payments where the owner of funds does not wish to reveal their identity.
The word bitcoin was defined in a white paper published on 31 October 2008.[4][14] It is a compound of the words bit and coin.[15] No uniform convention for bitcoin capitalization exists; some sources use Bitcoin, capitalized, to refer to the technology and network and bitcoin, lowercase, for the unit of account.[16] The Wall Street Journal,[17] The Chronicle of Higher Education,[18] and the Oxford English Dictionary[15] advocate the use of lowercase bitcoin in all cases.