Bitcoin is the first digital asset/cryptocurrency that utilizes blockchain technology to ensure all transactions are secure and immutable. It was invented in 2008 by a pseudonymous developer named Satoshi Nakamoto. The goal of the bitcoin invention was to allow digital financial transactions without the need for intermediaries, such as banks or governmental institutions.
When people say the word “Bitcoin”, there are actually two different things the word “Bitcoin” might refer to: bitcoin the digital asset (BTC), and Bitcoin the blockchain.
As a digital asset, bitcoin (BTC) is entirely digital without any physical form. BTC is global because it lives natively on the internet. BTC is scarce because there will only ever be 21,000,000 BTC in existence. Due to its scarcity and the complexity of its mining process, bitcoin has been nicknamed digital gold. Just like gold, it required work to release new ones from their source, computational work in the case of Bitcoins.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin the blockchain is the technology allowing you to send bitcoin (BTC) to anyone in the world without the need for banks. Instead of having a centralized third party to process your transaction, all bitcoin transactions are processed and secured by 10,000+ bitcoin servers or nodes running a bitcoin program that is distributed all around the world.
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