bitcoin
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈbɪtkɔɪn/
ipa: /ˈbɪtˌkɔɪn/
ipa: [ˈb̥ɪt̚ˌkɔɪ̯n]
ipa: [ˈb̥ɪʔˌkɔɪ̯n]
Forms: form: bitcoins
form: bitcoin
Etymology: From bit (“binary digit”) + coin, coined by Satoshi Nakamoto, believed to be a pseudonym for one or more people, in the domain name bitcoin.org registered on 18 August 2008; and in the title of the white paper “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”, a link to which was posted on the cryptography mailing list metzdowd.com on 31 October 2008: see the quotation.
Senses: examples: text: This item costs one bitcoin.
text: The value of fiat money is determined by legal means (legal tender laws). In other words, fiat money is anything the government says in money. For instance, if the government says an IOU or a bitcoin is money, then it is money. The major currencies of the contemporary world are fiat money.
ref: 2008 November, Alex Marchand, “What is Money?”, in Dissolving Dollars: Exposing the Debt-based Insanity behind Modern Money, [S.l.]: 451° Publishing, published April 2015, →ISBN, page 12:
text: Users willing to devote CPU power to running a special piece of software would be called miners and would form a network to maintain the block chain collectively. […] The first miner to solve each puzzle would be awarded 50 new bitcoins, and the associated block of transactions would be added to the chain. […] [Satoshi] Nakamoto himself mined the first 50 bitcoins—which came to be called the genesis block—on January 3, 2009.
ref: 2011 November 23, Benjamin Wallace, “The Rise and Fall of Bitcoin”, in Wired, San Francisco, Calif.: Condé Nast Publications, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 02 Jan 2025:
text: Each time you succeed in creating a hash, you are rewarded with 25 bitcoins, the block chain is updated and all the users on the network are notified. This serves as an incentive to keep mining the bitcoins and keep the bitcoin transactions working.
ref: 2013, Elda Watulo, John Davidson, “Making a Hash of It”, in How to Make Money Online With Digital Currency Bitcoins (Entrepreneur Book Series; 8), [S.l.]: JD-Biz Publishing, →ISBN:
text: They buy bitcoins at a lower price then sell them at a higher value.
ref: 2014, Kinsley Wallace, “How to Invest and Trade Bitcoins”, in Bitcoins: How to Invest, Buy and Sell: A Guide to Using the Bitcoin, [United States]: Speedy Publishing, →ISBN:
text: But consider that a significant amount of bitcoin is also being held by investors. Those investors do not plan to sell their bitcoin for some time because they are speculating that due to its utility as MoIP, demand will continue to rise and so too will its value. Currently, roughly 5.5 million bitcoin, or US$5.5 billion worth at the price of US$1,000 per coin, is held by the top 1,000 addresses recorded in Bitcoin's blockchain.
ref: 2017, Chris Burniske, Jack Tatar, Cryptoassets: The Innovative Investor’s Guide to Bitcoin and beyond, New York, N.Y.: McGraw-Hill Education, →ISBN, page 177:
text: Bitcoin is the oldest and best known of all crypto coins. Its creator — the ever-anonymous Satoshi Nakamoto — set things up so that there can never be more than 21 million bitcoins in existence.
Unlike other assets that are valued based on tangible components — for example, a company’s goods and services or a natural resource — bitcoin is considered a store of value, the price of which depends strictly on what others are willing to pay for it.
ref: 2024 November 19, Jeanne Sahadi, “Bitcoin has smashed records. Should you invest?”, in CNN Business:
topics: business
computing
engineering
finance
mathematics
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
sciences
synonyms: ₿
BTC
XBT
glosses: A unit of the bitcoin (proper noun sense 1) cryptocurrency.
Derived terms: bitcoiner
microbitcoin
millibitcoin
shitcoin
Related terms: Subdivisions of bitcoin
0.1 BTC
0.01 BTC
0.001 BTC
0.000001 BTC
0.00000001 BTC
Other terms
altcoin
coiner
dogecoin
memecoin