Bitcoin | Cryptocurrency
Bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency proposed in 2008 in a paper authored by someone behind the Satoshi Nakamoto pseudonym . Since then, it has reached a level of adoption unrealized by decades of previously proposed digital currencies. Unlike most previous proposals, Bitcoin does not distribute digital monetary units to users. Instead, a public ledger (called the blockchain) maintains a list of every transaction made by all Bitcoin users since the deployment of the currency in January 2009 when it became fully functional. Bitcoin network is an overlay network built upon peer-to-peer broadcasts which carries all information in the network. Through broadcasts, network achieves eventual consensus and information consistency. Generated transactions are continually propagated to neighbor nodes to induce updates, and the block which contains several confirmed transactions are also created and propagated to the entire network. There are a number