Bitcoin (BTC)

Bitcoin is the world's first decentralized cryptocurrency, created in 2009 by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto. It enables peer-to-peer electronic cash transactions without intermediaries like banks or governments, operating on a blockchain secured by Proof of Work mining and the SHA-256 cryptographic algorithm. With a fixed supply cap of 21 million coins and programmatic halvings every four years that reduce miner rewards, Bitcoin is designed as a deflationary digital asset often called "digital gold." Its value stems from solving the double-spending problem without trusted intermediaries, creating the first truly scarce digital asset with censorship resistance and permissionless access that no government, corporation, or individual can control. Bitcoin operates as a decentralized peer-to-peer network where transactions are recorded on a public ledger called the blockchain, distributed across thousands of computers globally. Transactions are grouped into blocks added approximately every 10 minutes through mining, where specialized computers compete to solve complex mathematical puzzles. Bitcoin has achieved mainstream adoption through multiple vectors.

Description from CoinGecko.

Coin details

Name

Bitcoin

Symbol

BTC

Market cap rank

#1

Category

Smart Contract Platform, Layer 1 (L1), FTX Holdings

Runs on

Its own blockchain

Hashing algorithm

SHA-256

Block time

10 min

Launched (genesis)

3 Jan 2009

Circulating supply

20,111,053 BTC

Max supply

21,000,000 BTC

Price in INR

₹6,805,085.95

Tax in India

30% on gains + 1% TDS on sale

Website

bitcoin.org

Whitepaper

bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

Explorer

mempool.space

X (Twitter)

x.com/bitcoin

Reddit

reddit.com/r/Bitcoin

GitHub

github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin