Bitcoin
a.k.a. BTC, XBT
The first cryptocurrency: digital money with a fixed cap of 21 million coins, run by a network that no single company controls.
Bitcoin (ticker BTC) is digital money that runs without a bank. It was described in a 2008 whitepaper by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto and went live in January 2009. Every payment is recorded on a public blockchain that thousands of computers around the world keep copies of and check.
New bitcoins are created as a reward for mining, which also secures the network. The reward is cut in half roughly every four years in the halving, and the total can never exceed 21 million coins. That hard cap is a big part of why fans call it "digital gold".
You don't need a whole coin: each bitcoin splits into 100 million satoshis. Its price is set purely by buyers and sellers, and it has a long record of brutal crashes as well as huge rallies.
Buying a slice
- Say one bitcoin trades at $50,000.
- You buy $100 worth: 100 ÷ 50,000 = 0.002 BTC, or 200,000 satoshis.
- If bitcoin drops 20%, your 0.002 BTC is worth $80. If it rises 20%, $120.
Bottom line: You can own a fraction of a coin, and every move in the price hits that fraction in full.
Thinking the fixed supply guarantees the price must go up. Scarcity only matters if demand holds, and Bitcoin has lost more than half its value several times.
Keep this word for good
Your free Private Swap Lounge saves the terms you’ve learned and quizzes you on them. Portal under construction. Expected delivery date is December 01, 2026.