What is bitcoin?

Bitcoin first came into existence in 2008. Who created bitcoin is still anonymous. Which doesn't mean that anonymous created bitcoin. It is believed that there is a good looking super human who is invisible to everyone had created it. He/She/It goes by the name Satoshi Nakamoto. Why they choose a Japanese name is still a mystery. Some claim that he is human and some claim that it’s god and others believe it’s an alien. Satoshi Nakamoto wrote the original Bitcoin code and released it under an MIT open source license in 2009. Today it is the first successful decentralized digital currency. Unlike Governments issued money. It cannot be randomly and easily inflated, manipulated, counterfeited, frozen or destroyed by an external party. With a bitcoin wallet you can send, receive and otherwise transact anywhere in the world without permission or the need for a bank account or credit history. With Bitcoin, your money is completely back in your control. It creates unrestricted financial freedom for everyone.

Is Bitcoin Centralized?

Rather than being created by a central bank, bitcoins are “mined” by people running software that races to solve a mathematical puzzle and win a prize of newly minted bitcoins. The mining process is designed to gradually pay out less and less over time, until 21 million bitcoins exist, and it also serves to verify transactions made in the currency. So you might misinterpret that bitcoins are created by mining them and Miners control the future of bitcoin.

Bitcoin’s purpose is to solve the following issues.

• Fiat currency has been a poor long-term store of value, especially since the gold standard was abolished¹;
• Inflation encourages consumption and discourages savings and the sustain able use of limited resources;
• Traditional financial services, especially banking, are not inclusive for the 2.1 billion people that live in poverty (less than $3.10/day);
• Electronic payment processing times and fees are too high, an important reason why 85% of all commerce globally is still done in cash;
• The financial services collapse of 2008 and subsequent banking system bailout caused substantial misery for the poorest of the global population, especially in developing economies;
• Losses associated with card fraud totaled $16.3 billion globally in 2014, with more than half of this fraud occurring online;
• Traditional banking and payments systems are not secure;
• Trust in traditional banking and financial services is at an all-time low.

Accordingly, Bitcoin community believes that every human has the following financial rights which should not be impeded by governments, regulators, financial institutions or other humans:

• The right to privacy in transactions that involve no harm to others;
• The right to keep your savings, or spend your money, anywhere in the world;
• The right to economic participation with or without a bank account;
• The right to economic participation with or without a credit history;
• The right to convert fiat currency into bitcoin and vice versa;
• The right to use bitcoin as a medium of exchange;
• The right to use bitcoin as a store of value.

Further Reference: Bitcoin Foundation