What is Bitcoin (BTC)?

Bitcoin (symbol: ₿; abbreviated ISO 4217: BTC or XBT) is a decentralized cryptocurrency, constituting an alternative economic system (peer-to-peer electronic cash system). Initially presented in 2008 on the The Cryptography Mailing mailing list by a programmer or group of programmers under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, it is considered the world's first decentralized digital currency, and responsible for the resurgence of the free banking system.

Bitcoin allows financial transactions without intermediaries, but verified by all users (nodes) of the network, which are recorded in a distributed database, called a blockchain.

The Bitcoin decentralized network or alternative economic system has a point-to-point topology (peer-to-peer or P2P), that is, a structure without a central management entity, which makes any financial or governmental authority unmanageable to issue and the bitcoin value or induce inflation by producing more money. However, large speculative movements in supply and demand influence the fluctuation of its value in the foreign exchange market, being freely defined 24 hours a day. That is, the value of the cryptocurrency does not derive from fiat currencies or other assets, that is, it is not backed by any asset; Bitcoin is the commodity, it is the unprecedented asset itself.

In the international financial and accounting scope, similar to gold, Bitcoin can be framed in some terms: speculative asset (material asset), commodity money (commodity), unit of account (exchange asset) - for being used as a means of exchange and for having a relative scarcity in addition to its own quotation - which added the abbreviation XBT tries to fit into ISO 4217, code that represents currencies.