This is post is taken from the Frequently Asked Questions.
Bitcoin was released into the world by a pseudonymous person who goes by the name of Satoshi Nakamoto. Satoshi released the code so that anyone could run it. It has many of the same values that make gold good money, but since it is digital, it is infinitely divisible and can be sent anywhere very quickly and at very little cost.
Bitcoin is an immutable ledger that keeps track of ownership of the units of money called bitcoin. Each bitcoin is divisible into units called satoshis (sats). There are 100 million sats per bitcoin.
At the time this was written, bitcoin was valued at around 61,000 USD per bitcoin (BTC). 1 USD buys 1,640 sats.
Just as the banks historically have acted as a trusted ledger, bitcoin is a ledger where everyone has the same copy and a third-party is no longer needed.
Bitcoin is energy money. It literally is backed by mining which uses electricity to secure the blockchain (see below for more information on how bitcoin works). Bitcoin is the most secure computing network ever created. It functions as the base layer upon which additional financial layers are and will be built.
One unique property of Bitcoin is that it is the scarcest asset in the world. It is released on a fixed schedule and no more can ever be printed. Satoshi designed the system so that around the year 2140, the last bitcoin will be mined, resulting in just under 21 million bitcoins that will ever be created. It currently has an inflation rate of around 0.84%, which will drop in the year 2028 to 0.41%.
One unique difference between Bitcoin and every other valuable asset in the world, such as gold, is that as demand for it increases and its price goes up, no more of it can be mined. If it is uneconomic to mine gold at $2000/oz, then if gold surged to $4000/oz, suddenly new areas would open up to mining. This does not happen in Bitcoin. The amount of bitcoin in existence is released at a fixed scheduled.
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