What Bitcoin is

Bitcoin is money kept in one shared record of payments. Thousands of computers around the world keep a copy and check every entry against the same rules, so no bank or company is needed to say who owns what.

Live from the chain

The newest blockLoading live figures…

Block number

…

Added

…

Payments inside

…transactions

Added by

…mining pool, from the block's own tag

New bitcoin it created

…plus the fees inside

A new block like this one joins the record about every ten minutes.

See it on satoshis.watch →

A record anyone can check

The record is called the blockchain. It is a chain of blocks, and each block holds a batch of transactions: what was paid, from where, to where. Every block points to the one before it, all the way back to the first block, made on 3 January 2009. Changing an old entry would break every block after it, so the past can't be quietly rewritten.

Who adds the blocks

Computers called miners compete to add the next block. Winning takes an enormous amount of computing work, which makes cheating expensive. Every other computer then checks the block and rejects it if it breaks a rule. The winner is paid in new bitcoin plus the fees of the payments inside. That payment is the only way new bitcoin comes into existence.

What owning bitcoin means

There is no coin in a file somewhere, not even on your phone. The record says that certain amounts can be spent only with a certain secret key. Whoever holds the key can move those amounts. That is why keys and addresses get their own lesson, and why Level 3 is about keeping keys safe.

The very first block

Live from the chain

Where the first reward wentLoading live figures…

Balance today

…

Payments received

…since 2009

The first block paid 50 bitcoin to this address. A quirk in the original code means those 50 can never be spent, and nodes do not count them, so the balance here is only what people have sent since, mostly small tributes. Some explorers add the 50 and show a higher figure.

See it on satoshis.watch →

The first block also carries a line of text its creator chose: a newspaper headline from that day, The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks. It shows the block was made no earlier than that day, and it is still in every copy of the record.

See this address on satoshis.watch.