Bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency that has no central bank or single administrator. It does not require an intermediary and transactions can be made by sending bitcoins from user to user on the bitcoin network in a peer-to-peer (P2P) fashion. The transactions are verified by network nodes, and all Bitcoin transactions are recorded in a decentralized ledger called a blockchain (blockchain).

Bitcoin was invented in 2008 by a person or group calling itself Satoshi Nakamoto, and its implementation was released as open source software and put into use in 2009.