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What is Bitcoin?
Bitcoin is money that runs on the internet with no bank or company in charge.
- Bitcoin is digital money you can send to anyone, anywhere, without a bank.
- Thousands of computers around the world keep the same shared record of who owns what.
- Only 21 million bitcoin will ever exist, and no one can print more.
Bitcoin started in January 2009, a few months after a person or group using the name Satoshi Nakamoto published a nine-page paper describing "peer-to-peer electronic cash."
Normally a bank keeps track of your money. With Bitcoin, the record is public and copied across thousands of computers, called nodes. They all check the same rules, so no single person can change the record or create extra coins.
You hold bitcoin in a wallet, an app or small device that holds your keys. The keys are what let you spend it. When you hold your own keys, no one can freeze your bitcoin.
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Is "Bitcoin" the same as "bitcoin"?
By habit, capital-B Bitcoin is the network and the software. Lowercase bitcoin is the money itself, as in "I sent 0.01 bitcoin."
Who controls Bitcoin?
No one. Anyone can run the software, and changes to the rules only take hold if the people running it choose to adopt them. That makes Bitcoin slow to change on purpose.
Where can I read the original paper?
The Bitcoin whitepaper is free at bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf. It is short, but technical.