Bitcoin

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Bitcoin
Prevailing bitcoin logo
Prevailing bitcoin logo
Denominations
Pluralbitcoins
Symbol₿ (Unicode: U+20BF ₿ BITCOIN SIGN (HTML ₿))[lower-alpha 1]
Ticker symbolBTC, XBT[lower-alpha 2]
Precision10−8
Subunits
 ​1⁄1000millibitcoin
 ​1⁄100000000satoshi[2]
Development
Original author(s)Satoshi Nakamoto
White paper"Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System"
Implementation(s)Bitcoin Core
Initial release0.1.0 / 9 January 2009 (15 years ago) (2009-01-09)
Latest release0.21.1 / 2 May 2021 (2 years ago) (2021-05-02)[3]
Code repositoryhttps://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin
Development statusActive
Websitebitcoin.org
Ledger
Ledger start3 January 2009 (15 years ago) (2009-01-03)
Timestamping schemeProof-of-work (partial hash inversion)
Hash functionSHA-256
Issuance scheduleDecentralized (block reward)
Initially ₿50 per block, halved every 210,000 blocks[6]
Block reward₿6.25[lower-alpha 3]
Block time10 minutes
Block explorerMany implementations
Circulating supply₿18,660,000 (as of 20 March 2021)
Supply limit₿21,000,000[4][lower-alpha 4]
  1. ↑ The symbol was encoded in Unicode version 10.0 at position U+20BF ₿ BITCOIN SIGN in the Currency Symbols block in June 2017.[1]
  2. ↑ Compatible with ISO 4217.
  3. ↑ May 2020 to approximately 2024, halved approximately every four years
  4. ↑ The supply will approach, but never reach, ₿21 million. Issuance will permanently halt c. 2140 at ₿20,999,999.9769.[5]:ch. 8

Bitcoin (₿) is a decentralized digital currency, without a central bank or single administrator, that can be sent from user to user on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network without the need for intermediaries.[6] Transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a public distributed ledger called a blockchain. The cryptocurrency was invented in 2008 by an unknown person or group of people using the name Satoshi Nakamoto.[7] The currency began use in 2009[8] when its implementation was released as open-source software.[5]:ch. 1

Bitcoins are created as a reward for a process known as mining. They can be exchanged for other currencies, products, and services,[9] but the real-world value of the coins is extremely volatile.[10] Research produced by the University of Cambridge estimated that in 2017, there were 2.9 to 5.8 million unique users using a cryptocurrency wallet, most of them using bitcoin.[11] Users choose to participate in the digital currency for a number of reasons: ideologies such as commitment to anarchism, decentralization and libertarianism, convenience, using the currency as an investment and pseudonymity of transactions. Increased use has led to a desire among governments for regulation in order to tax, facilitate legal use in trade and for other reasons (such as investigations for money laundering and price manipulation).

Bitcoin has been criticized for its use in illegal transactions, the large amount of electricity (and thus carbon footprint) used by mining, price volatility, and thefts from exchanges. Some economists and commentators have characterized it as a speculative bubble at various times. Bitcoin has also been used as an investment, although several regulatory agencies have issued investor alerts about bitcoin.[10][12][13]

The word bitcoin was defined in a white paper published on 31 October 2008.[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.

History[edit]

Main article: History of bitcoin

Design[edit]

Main article: Design of bitcoin
Graph of the elliptic curve named secp256k1 in real coordinate space

Bitcoin is based on an elliptic curve called "secp256k1" and encrypted with the ECDSA algorithm. The equation for the Bitcoin secp256k1 curve is 2=3+7.[19] Bitcoin has a proposed Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) that would add support for Schnorr signatures.[20]:101

Ideology[edit]

Satoshi Nakamoto stated in his white paper that: "The root problem with conventional currencies is all the trust that's required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust."[21]

Austrian economics roots[edit]

According to the European Central Bank, the decentralization of money offered by bitcoin has its theoretical roots in the Austrian school of economics, especially with Friedrich von Hayek in his book Denationalisation of Money: The Argument Refined,[22] in which Hayek advocates a complete free market in the production, distribution and management of money to end the monopoly of central banks.[23]:22

Anarchism and libertarianism[edit]

Further information: Crypto-anarchism

According to The New York Times, libertarians and anarchists were attracted to the philosophical idea behind bitcoin. Early bitcoin supporter Roger Ver said: "At first, almost everyone who got involved did so for philosophical reasons. We saw bitcoin as a great idea, as a way to separate money from the state."[21] The Economist describes bitcoin as "a techno-anarchist project to create an online version of cash, a way for people to transact without the possibility of interference from malicious governments or banks".[24] Economist Paul Krugman argues that cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are "something of a cult" based in "paranoid fantasies" of government power.[25]

External video
The Declaration Of Bitcoin's Independence, BraveTheWorld, 4:38[26]

Nigel Dodd argues in The Social Life of Bitcoin that the essence of the bitcoin ideology is to remove money from social, as well as governmental, control.[27] Dodd quotes a YouTube video, with Roger Ver, Jeff Berwick, Charlie Shrem, Andreas Antonopoulos, Gavin Wood, Trace Meyer and other proponents of bitcoin reading The Declaration of Bitcoin's Independence. The declaration includes a message of crypto-anarchism with the words: "Bitcoin is inherently anti-establishment, anti-system, and anti-state. Bitcoin undermines governments and disrupts institutions because bitcoin is fundamentally humanitarian."[27][26]

David Golumbia says that the ideas influencing bitcoin advocates emerge from right-wing extremist movements such as the Liberty Lobby and the John Birch Society and their anti-Central Bank rhetoric, or, more recently, Ron Paul and Tea Party-style libertarianism.[28] Steve Bannon, who owns a "good stake" in bitcoin, considers it to be "disruptive populism. It takes control back from central authorities. It's revolutionary."[29]

A 2014 study of Google Trends data found correlations between bitcoin-related searches and ones related to computer programming and illegal activity, but not libertarianism or investment topics.[30]

Economics[edit]

Main article: Economics of bitcoin
Liquidity,[lower-alpha 1] semilogarithmic plot.

Bitcoin is a digital asset designed to work in peer-to-peer transactions as a currency.[31][32] Bitcoins have three qualities useful in a currency, according to The Economist in January 2015: they are "hard to earn, limited in supply and easy to verify."[33] Per some researchers, as of 2015, bitcoin functions more as a payment system than as a currency.

Economists define money as serving the following three purposes: a store of value, a medium of exchange, and a unit of account.[34] According to The Economist in 2014, bitcoin functions best as a medium of exchange.[34] However, this is debated, and a 2018 assessment by The Economist stated that cryptocurrencies met none of these three criteria.[24] Yale economist Robert J. Shiller writes that bitcoin has potential as a unit of account for measuring the relative value of goods, as with Chile's Unidad de Fomento, but that "Bitcoin in its present form [...] doesn't really solve any sensible economic problem".[35]

According to research by Cambridge University, between 2.9 million and 5.8 million unique users used a cryptocurrency wallet in 2017, most of them for bitcoin. The number of users has grown significantly since 2013, when there were 300,000–1.3 million users.[11]

Acceptance by merchants[edit]

The overwhelming majority of bitcoin transactions take place on a cryptocurrency exchange, rather than being used in transactions with merchants.[36] Delays processing payments through the blockchain of about ten minutes make bitcoin use very difficult in a retail setting. Prices are not usually quoted in units of bitcoin and many trades involve one, or sometimes two, conversions into conventional currencies. Merchants that do accept bitcoin payments may use payment service providers to perform the conversions.[37]

In 2017 and 2018 bitcoin's acceptance among major online retailers included only three of the top 500 U.S. online merchants, down from five in 2016.[36] Reasons for this decline include high transaction fees due to bitcoin's scalability issues and long transaction times.[38]

Bloomberg reported that the largest 17 crypto merchant-processing services handled $69 million in June 2018, down from $411 million in September 2017. Bitcoin is "not actually usable" for retail transactions because of high costs and the inability to process chargebacks, according to Nicholas Weaver, a researcher quoted by Bloomberg. High price volatility and transaction fees make paying for small retail purchases with bitcoin impractical, according to economist Kim Grauer. However, bitcoin continues to be used for large-item purchases on sites such as Overstock.com, and for cross-border payments to freelancers and other vendors.[39]

Financial institutions[edit]

Bitcoins can be bought on digital currency exchanges.

Per researchers, "there is little sign of bitcoin use" in international remittances despite high fees charged by banks and Western Union who compete in this market. The South China Morning Post, however, mentions the use of bitcoin by Hong Kong workers to transfer money home.[40]

In 2014, the National Australia Bank closed accounts of businesses with ties to bitcoin,[41] and HSBC refused to serve a hedge fund with links to bitcoin.[42] Australian banks in general have been reported as closing down bank accounts of operators of businesses involving the currency.[43]

On 10 December 2017, the Chicago Board Options Exchange started trading bitcoin futures,[44] followed by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, which started trading bitcoin futures on 17 December 2017.[45]

In September 2019 the Central Bank of Venezuela, at the request of PDVSA, ran tests to determine if bitcoin and ether could be held in central bank's reserves. The request was motivated by oil company's goal to pay its suppliers.[46]

As an investment[edit]

The Winklevoss twins have purchased bitcoin. In 2013, The Washington Post reported a claim that they owned 1% of all the bitcoins in existence at the time.[47]

Other methods of investment are bitcoin funds. The first regulated bitcoin fund was established in Jersey in July 2014 and approved by the Jersey Financial Services Commission.[48]

Forbes named bitcoin the best investment of 2013.[49] In 2014, Bloomberg named bitcoin one of its worst investments of the year.[50] In 2015, bitcoin topped Bloomberg's currency tables.[51]

According to bitinfocharts.com, in 2017 there are 9,272 bitcoin wallets with more than $1 million worth of bitcoins.[52] The exact number of bitcoin millionaires is uncertain as a single person can have more than one bitcoin wallet.

In August 2020, MicroStrategy invested in Bitcoin.[53][54]

In May 2021, the Bitcoin's market share on exchanges dropped from 70% to 45% as investors pursued altcoins.[55]

Venture capital[edit]

Peter Thiel's Founders Fund invested US$3 million in BitPay.[56] In 2012, an incubator for bitcoin-focused start-ups was founded by Adam Draper, with financing help from his father, venture capitalist Tim Draper, one of the largest bitcoin holders after winning an auction of 30,000 bitcoins,[57] at the time called "mystery buyer".[58] The company's goal is to fund 100 bitcoin businesses within 2–3 years with $10,000 to $20,000 for a 6% stake.[57] Investors also invest in bitcoin mining.[59] According to a 2015 study by Paolo Tasca, bitcoin startups raised almost $1 billion in three years (Q1 2012 – Q1 2015).[60]

Price and volatility[edit]

Price in US$, semilogarithmic plot.
Annual volatility

The price of bitcoins has gone through cycles of appreciation and depreciation referred to by some as bubbles and busts.[61] In 2011, the value of one bitcoin rapidly rose from about US$0.30 to US$32 before returning to US$2.[62] In the latter half of 2012 and during the 2012–13 Cypriot financial crisis, the bitcoin price began to rise,[63] reaching a high of US$266 on 10 April 2013, before crashing to around US$50. On 29 November 2013, the cost of one bitcoin rose to a peak of US$1,242.[64] In 2014, the price fell sharply, and as of April remained depressed at little more than half 2013 prices. As of August 2014 it was under US$600.[65]

According to Mark T. Williams, as of 30 September 2014, bitcoin has volatility seven times greater than gold, eight times greater than the S&P 500, and 18 times greater than the US dollar.[66] Hodl is a meme created in reference to holding (as opposed to selling) during periods of volatility. Unusual for an asset, bitcoin weekend trading during December 2020 was higher than for weekdays.[67] Hedge funds (using high leverage and derivates)[68] have attempted to use the volatility to profit from downward price movements. At the end of January 2021, such positions were over $1 billion, their highest of all time.[69][70] As of 8 February 2021, the closing price of bitcoin equals US$44,797.[71]

Legal status, tax and regulation[edit]

Further information: Legality of bitcoin by country or territory

Because of bitcoin's decentralized nature and its trading on online exchanges located in many countries, regulation of bitcoin has been difficult. However, the use of bitcoin can be criminalized, and shutting down exchanges and the peer-to-peer economy in a given country would constitute a de facto ban.[72] The legal status of bitcoin varies substantially from country to country and is still undefined or changing in many of them. Regulations and bans that apply to bitcoin probably extend to similar cryptocurrency systems.[60]

According to the Library of Congress, an "absolute ban" on trading or using cryptocurrencies applies in nine countries: Algeria, Bolivia, Egypt, Iraq, Morocco, Nepal, Pakistan, Vietnam, and the United Arab Emirates. An "implicit ban" applies in another 15 countries, which include Bahrain, Bangladesh, China, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Indonesia, Kuwait, Lesotho, Lithuania, Macau, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Taiwan.[73]

In October 2020, the Islamic Republic News Agency announced pending regulations that would require bitcoin miners in Iran to sell bitcoin to the Central Bank of Iran, and the central bank would use it for imports.[74] Iran, as of October 2020, had issued over 1,000 bitcoin mining licenses.[74] The Iranian government initially took a stance against cryptocurrency, but later changed it after seeing that digital currency could be used to circumvent sanctions.[75] The US Office of Foreign Assets Control listed two Iranians and their bitcoin addresses as part of its Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List for their role in the 2018 Atlanta cyberattack whose ransom was paid in bitcoin.[76]

Regulatory warnings[edit]

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission has issued four "Customer Advisories" for bitcoin and related investments.[12] A July 2018 warning emphasized that trading in any cryptocurrency is often speculative, and there is a risk of theft from hacking, and fraud.[77] In May 2014 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission warned that investments involving bitcoin might have high rates of fraud, and that investors might be solicited on social media sites.[78] An earlier "Investor Alert" warned about the use of bitcoin in Ponzi schemes.[79]

The European Banking Authority issued a warning in 2013 focusing on the lack of regulation of bitcoin, the chance that exchanges would be hacked, the volatility of bitcoin's price, and general fraud.[80] FINRA and the North American Securities Administrators Association have both issued investor alerts about bitcoin.[81][82]

Price manipulation investigation[edit]

An official investigation into bitcoin traders was reported in May 2018.[83] The U.S. Justice Department launched an investigation into possible price manipulation, including the techniques of spoofing and wash trades.[84][85][86]

The U.S. federal investigation was prompted by concerns of possible manipulation during futures settlement dates. The final settlement price of CME bitcoin futures is determined by prices on four exchanges, Bitstamp, Coinbase, itBit and Kraken. Following the first delivery date in January 2018, the CME requested extensive detailed trading information but several of the exchanges refused to provide it and later provided only limited data. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission then subpoenaed the data from the exchanges.[87][88]

State and provincial securities regulators, coordinated through the North American Securities Administrators Association, are investigating "bitcoin scams" and ICOs in 40 jurisdictions.[89]

Academic research published in the Journal of Monetary Economics concluded that price manipulation occurred during the Mt Gox bitcoin theft and that the market remains vulnerable to manipulation.[90] The history of hacks, fraud and theft involving bitcoin dates back to at least 2011.[91]

Research by John M. Griffin and Amin Shams in 2018 suggests that trading associated with increases in the amount of the Tether cryptocurrency and associated trading at the Bitfinex exchange account for about half of the price increase in bitcoin in late 2017.[92][93]

J.L. van der Velde, CEO of both Bitfinex and Tether, denied the claims of price manipulation: "Bitfinex nor Tether is, or has ever, engaged in any sort of market or price manipulation. Tether issuances cannot be used to prop up the price of bitcoin or any other coin/token on Bitfinex."[94]

Analysis[edit]

External video
Cryptocurrencies: looking beyond the hype, Hyun Song Shin, Bank for International Settlements, 2:48[95]

The Bank for International Settlements summarized several criticisms of bitcoin in Chapter V of their 2018 annual report. The criticisms include the lack of stability in bitcoin's price, the high energy consumption, high and variable transactions costs, the poor security and fraud at cryptocurrency exchanges, vulnerability to debasement (from forking), and the influence of miners.[95][96][97]

François R. Velde, Senior Economist at the Chicago Fed, described bitcoin as "an elegant solution to the problem of creating a digital currency".[98] David Andolfatto, Vice President at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, stated that bitcoin is a threat to the establishment, which he argues is a good thing for the Federal Reserve System and other central banks, because it prompts these institutions to operate sound policies.:33[99][100]

Economic concerns[edit]

Further information: Cryptocurrency bubble and Economics of bitcoin
Bitcoin price bubbles in 2011, 2013 and 2017

Bitcoin, along with other cryptocurrencies, has been described as an economic bubble by at least eight Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences laureates at various times, including Robert Shiller on 1 March 2014,[35] Joseph Stiglitz on 29 November 2017,[101] and Richard Thaler on 21 December 2017.[102][103] On 29 January 2018, a noted Keynesian economist Paul Krugman has described bitcoin as "a bubble wrapped in techno-mysticism inside a cocoon of libertarian ideology",[25] on 2 February 2018, professor Nouriel Roubini of New York University has called bitcoin the "mother of all bubbles",[104] and on 27 April 2018, a University of Chicago economist James Heckman has compared it to the 17th-century tulip mania.[103]

Journalists, economists, investors, and the central bank of Estonia have voiced concerns that bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme.[105][106][107][108] In April 2013, Eric Posner, a law professor at the University of Chicago, stated that "a real Ponzi scheme takes fraud; bitcoin, by contrast, seems more like a collective delusion."[109] A July 2014 report by the World Bank concluded that bitcoin was not a deliberate Ponzi scheme.[110]:7 In June 2014, the Swiss Federal Council examined concerns that bitcoin might be a pyramid scheme, and concluded that "since in the case of bitcoin the typical promises of profits are lacking, it cannot be assumed that bitcoin is a pyramid scheme."[111]:21

Energy consumption and carbon footprint[edit]

Bitcoin electricity consumption
Electricity consumption of the bitcoin network since 2016 (annualized) and comparison with the electricity consumption of various countries in 2019. The upper and lower bounds (grey traces) are based on worst-case and best-case scenario assumptions, respectively. The red trace indicates an intermediate best-guess estimate. (data sources: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index, US Energy Information Administration; for details, see methodology)

Bitcoin has been criticized for the amount of electricity consumed by mining.

As of 2015, estimated combined electricity consumption attributed to mining was 166.7 megawatts and by 2017, was estimated to be between one and four gigawatts of electricity.[112][33] In 2018, bitcoin was estimated by to use 2.55 to 3.572 GW, or around 6% of the total power consumed by the global banking sector.[113][114][115] In July 2019 BBC reported bitcoin consumes about 7 gigawatts, 0.2% of the global total, or equivalent to that of Switzerland.[116] A 2021 estimate from the University of Cambridge suggests bitcoin consumes more than 178 (TWh) annually, ranking it in the top 30 energy consumers if it were a country.[117]

Bitcoin is mined in places like Iceland where geothermal energy is cheap and cooling Arctic air is free.[118] Bitcoin miners are known to use hydroelectric power in Tibet, Quebec, Washington (state), and Austria to reduce electricity costs.[113][119] Miners are attracted to suppliers such as Hydro Quebec that have energy surpluses.[120]

According to a University of Cambridge study, much of bitcoin mining is done in China, where electricity is subsidized by the government.[121][122] A significant part of Bitcoin mining is powered by cheap electricity in Xinjiang, which mostly comes from coal power.[123][124] In April 2021 a coal mine explosion in the province coincided with a 35% drop in hashing power and a flash crash in price.[125][123] In other provinces, such as Hunan and Sichuan, mining farms use more hydropower, however these account for at most 4% of hash power. According to Alex de Vries, renewable energy is not a good match for Bitcoin mining as 24/7 operations are best for ROI on mining devices.[125] In 2021, a US company purchased the Greenidge coal power plant and converted it to burn natural gas for the sole purpose of mining bitcoin, which has proven to be highly profitable, in spite of protests of local residents against air pollution and thermal pollution.[126]

Concerns about bitcoin's environmental impact relate bitcoin's energy consumption to carbon emissions.[127][128] The difficulty of translating the energy consumption into carbon emissions lies in the decentralized nature of bitcoin impeding the localization of miners to examine the electricity mix used. The results of recent studies analyzing bitcoin's carbon footprint vary.[129][130][131][132] A study published in Nature Climate Change in 2018 claims that bitcoin "could alone produce enough CO
2 emissions to push warming above 2 °C within less than three decades."[131] However, other researchers criticized this analysis, arguing the underlying scenarios were inadequate, leading to overestimations.[133][134][135] According to studies published in Joule and American Chemical Society in 2019, bitcoin's annual energy consumption results in annual carbon emission ranging from 17[115] to 22.9 MtCO
2 which is comparable to the level of emissions of countries as Jordan and Sri Lanka or Kansas City.[132] George Kamiya, writing for the International Energy Agency, says that "predictions about bitcoin consuming the entire world's electricity" are sensational, but that the area "requires careful monitoring and rigorous analysis".[136]

Use in illegal transactions[edit]

Further information: Cryptocurrency and crime and Bitcoin network § Alleged criminal activity

Bitcoin held at exchanges are vulnerable to theft through phishing, scamming, and hacking. As of December 2017, around 980,000 bitcoins have been stolen from cryptocurrency exchanges.

The use of bitcoin by criminals has attracted the attention of financial regulators, legislative bodies, law enforcement, and the media.[137] Bitcoin gained early notoriety for its use on the Silk Road. The U.S. Senate held a hearing on virtual currencies in November 2013.[138] The U.S. government claimed that bitcoin was used to facilitate payments related to Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.[139] However, a 2021 study led by former CIA director Michael Morell showed that broad generalizations about the use of bitcoin in illicit finance are significantly overstated and that blockchain analysis is an effective crime fighting and intelligence gathering tool.[140]

Several news outlets have asserted that the popularity of bitcoins hinges on the ability to use them to purchase illegal goods.[32][141] Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz says that bitcoin's anonymity encourages money laundering and other crimes.[142][143]

In 2014, researchers at the University of Kentucky found "robust evidence that computer programming enthusiasts and illegal activity drive interest in bitcoin, and find limited or no support for political and investment motives".[30] Australian researchers have estimated that 25% of all bitcoin users and 44% of all bitcoin transactions are associated with illegal activity as of April 2017. There were an estimated 24 million bitcoin users primarily using bitcoin for illegal activity. They held $8 billion worth of bitcoin, and made 36 million transactions valued at $72 billion.[144][145]

Software implementation[edit]

Bitcoin Core
The start screen under Fedora
The start screen under Fedora
Original author(s)Satoshi Nakamoto
Initial release2009
Written inC++
Operating systemLinux, Windows, macOS
TypeCryptocurrency
LicenseMIT License
Websitebitcoincore.org

Bitcoin Core is free and open-source software that serves as a bitcoin node (the set of which form the bitcoin network) and provides a bitcoin wallet which fully verifies payments. It is considered to be bitcoin's reference implementation.[146] Initially, the software was published by Satoshi Nakamoto under the name "Bitcoin", and later renamed to "Bitcoin Core" to distinguish it from the network.[147] It is also known as the Satoshi client.[148]

The MIT Digital Currency Initiative funds some of the development of Bitcoin Core.[149] The project also maintains the cryptography library libsecp256k1.[150]

Bitcoin Core includes a transaction verification engine and connects to the bitcoin network as a full node.[148] Moreover, a cryptocurrency wallet, which can be used to transfer funds, is included by default.[150] The wallet allows for the sending and receiving of bitcoins. It does not facilitate the buying or selling of bitcoin. It allows users to generate QR codes to receive payment.

The software validates the entire blockchain, which includes all bitcoin transactions ever. This distributed ledger which has reached more than 235 gigabytes in size as of Jan 2019, must be downloaded or synchronized before full participation of the client may occur.[148] Although the complete blockchain is not needed all at once since it is possible to run in pruning mode. A command line-based daemon with a JSON-RPC interface, bitcoind, is bundled with Bitcoin Core. It also provides access to testnet, a global testing environment that imitates the bitcoin main network using an alternative blockchain where valueless "test bitcoins" are used. Regtest or Regression Test Mode creates a private blockchain which is used as a local testing environment.[151] Finally, bitcoin-cli, a simple program which allows users to send RPC commands to bitcoind, is also included.

Checkpoints which have been hard coded into the client are used only to prevent Denial of Service attacks against nodes which are initially syncing the chain. For this reason the checkpoints included are only as of several years ago.[152][153][failed verification] A one megabyte block size limit was added in 2010 by Satoshi Nakamoto. This limited the maximum network capacity to about three transactions per second.[154] Since then, network capacity has been improved incrementally both through block size increases and improved wallet behavior. A network alert system was included by Satoshi Nakamoto as a way of informing users of important news regarding bitcoin.[155] In November 2016 it was retired. It had become obsolete as news on bitcoin is now widely disseminated.

Bitcoin Core includes a scripting language inspired by Forth that can define transactions and specify parameters.[156] ScriptPubKey is used to "lock" transactions based on a set of future conditions. scriptSig is used to meet these conditions or "unlock" a transaction. Operations on the data are performed by various OP_Codes. Two stacks are used - main and alt. Looping is forbidden.

Bitcoin Core uses OpenTimestamps to timestamp merge commits.[157]

The original creator of the bitcoin client has described their approach to the software's authorship as it being written first to prove to themselves that the concept of purely peer-to-peer electronic cash was valid and that a paper with solutions could be written. The lead developer is Wladimir J. van der Laan, who took over the role on 8 April 2014.[158] Gavin Andresen was the former lead maintainer for the software client. Andresen left the role of lead developer for bitcoin to work on the strategic development of its technology.[158] Bitcoin Core in 2015 was central to a dispute with Bitcoin XT, a competing client that sought to increase the blocksize.[159] Over a dozen different companies and industry groups fund the development of Bitcoin Core.

In popular culture[edit]

Term "HODL"[edit]

Hodl (/ˈhɒdəl/ HOD-əl; often written HODL) is slang in the cryptocurrency community for holding a cryptocurrency rather than selling it.[160] A person who does this is known as a Hodler. It originated in a December 2013 post on the Bitcoin Forum message board by an apparently inebriated user who posted with a typo in the subject, "I AM HODLING."[161] It is often humorously suggested to be a backronym to "hold on for dear life".[162] In 2017, Quartz listed it as one of the essential slang terms in Bitcoin culture, and described it as a stance, "to stay invested in bitcoin and not to capitulate in the face of plunging prices."[163] TheStreet.com referred to it as the "favorite mantra" of Bitcoin holders.[164] Bloomberg News referred to it as a "mantra" for holders during market routs.[165]

Literature[edit]

In Charles Stross' 2013 science fiction novel, Neptune's Brood, the universal interstellar payment system is known as "bitcoin" and operates using cryptography.[166] Stross later blogged that the reference was intentional, saying "I wrote Neptune's Brood in 2011. Bitcoin was obscure back then, and I figured had just enough name recognition to be a useful term for an interstellar currency: it'd clue people in that it was a networked digital currency."[167]

Film[edit]

The 2014 documentary The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin portrays the diversity of motives behind the use of bitcoin by interviewing people who use it. These include a computer programmer and a drug dealer.[168] The 2016 documentary Banking on Bitcoin is an introduction to the beginnings of bitcoin and the ideas behind cryptocurrency today.[169]

Academia[edit]

In September 2015, the establishment of the peer-reviewed academic journal Ledger (ISSN 2379-5980) was announced. It covers studies of cryptocurrencies and related technologies, and is published by the University of Pittsburgh.[170] The journal encourages authors to digitally sign a file hash of submitted papers, which will then be timestamped into the bitcoin blockchain. Authors are also asked to include a personal bitcoin address in the first page of their papers.[171][172]

See also[edit]

Notes[edit]

  1. ↑ Liquidity is estimated by a 365-day running sum of transaction outputs in USD.

References[edit]

  1. ↑ "Unicode 10.0.0". Unicode Consortium. 20 June 2017. Archived from the original on 20 June 2017. Retrieved 20 June 2017.
  2. ↑ Mick, Jason (12 June 2011). "Cracking the Bitcoin: Digging Into a $131M USD Virtual Currency". Daily Tech. Archived from the original on 20 January 2013. Retrieved 30 September 2012.
  3. ↑ "Releases - bitcoin/bitcoin". Retrieved 9 May 2021 – via GitHub.
  4. ↑ Nakamoto; et al. (1 April 2016). "Bitcoin source code - amount constraints". Archived from the original on 1 July 2018.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Antonopoulos, Andreas M. (April 2014). Mastering Bitcoin: Unlocking Digital Crypto-Currencies. O'Reilly Media. ISBN 978-1-4493-7404-4.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 "Statement of Jennifer Shasky Calvery, Director Financial Crimes Enforcement Network United States Department of the Treasury Before the United States Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Subcommittee on National Security and International Trade and Finance Subcommittee on Economic Policy" (PDF). fincen.gov. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. 19 November 2013. Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 October 2016. Retrieved 1 June 2014.
  7. ↑ S., L. (2 November 2015). "Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?". The Economist. The Economist Newspaper Limited. Archived from the original on 21 August 2016. Retrieved 23 September 2016.
  8. ↑ Davis, Joshua (10 October 2011). "The Crypto-Currency: Bitcoin and its mysterious inventor". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on 1 November 2014. Retrieved 31 October 2014.
  9. ↑ "What is Bitcoin?". CNN Money. Archived from the original on 31 October 2015. Retrieved 16 November 2015.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 GmbH, finanzen net. "Bitcoin's limited real-world use and extreme volatility show its recent surge is still a speculative bubble, UBS Global Wealth Management says". markets.businessinsider.com. Retrieved 28 March 2021.
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  163. ↑ Wong, Joon Ian. "Buy and hodl, just don't get #rekt: The slang that gets you taken seriously as a bitcoin trader". Quartz. Archived from the original on 22 December 2017. Retrieved 22 December 2017.
  164. ↑ Akhtar, Tanzeel (22 December 2017). "As Bitcoin plunges, cryptocurrency fans chant 'HODL' for comfort". TheStreet. Archived from the original on 23 December 2017. Retrieved 22 December 2017.
  165. ↑ Hajric, Vildana (19 November 2020). "All the Bitcoin Lingo You Need to Know as Crypto Heats Up". Bloomberg. Retrieved 1 December 2020.
  166. ↑ Stross, Charles (2013). Neptune's Brood (First ed.). New York: Penguin Group USA. ISBN 978-0-425-25677-0. It's theft-proof too – for each bitcoin is cryptographically signed by the mind of its owner.
  167. ↑ "Crib Sheet: Neptune's Brood – Charlie's Diary". www.antipope.org. Archived from the original on 14 June 2017. Retrieved 5 December 2017. I wrote Neptune's Brood in 2011. Bitcoin was obscure back then, and I figured had just enough name recognition to be a useful term for an interstellar currency: it'd clue people in that it was a networked digital currency.
  168. ↑ Kenigsberg, Ben (2 October 2014). "Financial Wild West". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 18 May 2015. Retrieved 8 May 2015.
  169. ↑ Michel, Lincoln (16 December 2017). "What the Hell Is Bitcoin? Let This Documentary on Netflix Explain". GQ. Archived from the original on 18 November 2018. Retrieved 10 October 2018.
  170. ↑ "Introducing Ledger, the First Bitcoin-Only Academic Journal". Motherboard. Archived from the original on 10 January 2017.
  171. ↑ "Editorial Policies". ledgerjournal.org. Archived from the original on 23 December 2016. Retrieved 10 January 2017.
  172. ↑ "How to Write and Format an Article for Ledger" (PDF). Ledger. 2015. doi:10.5195/LEDGER.2015.1 (inactive 31 May 2021). Archived (PDF) from the original on 22 September 2015.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of May 2021 (link)

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