#BTCReclaims101K $BTC Bitcoin (BTC) is a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency that functions as a medium of exchange independent of central authorities. It can be securely transferred electronically and is verifiable and immutable.
BTC was launched in 2009 and is the first virtual currency to solve the double-spending problem by time-stamp transactions before broadcasting them to all nodes on the Bitcoin network. The Bitcoin protocol offered a solution to the Byzantine Generals Problem with a blockchain network structure, a notion first created by Stuart Haber and W. Scott Stornetta in 1991.
The Bitcoin whitepaper was published in 2008 by an individual, or group of people, under the pseudonym "Satoshi Nakamoto", whose identity is still unknown.
The protocol uses the SHA-256d-based Proof-of-Work (PoW) algorithm to achieve consensus on the network. The network has a target block time of 10 minutes and a maximum supply of 21 million tokens, with a decreasing token issuance rate. To prevent fluctuations in block time, the network’s block difficulty is readjusted by an algorithm based on the times of the last 2,016 blocks. With a block size limit of 1 megabyte, the Bitcoin Protocol supported both the Lightning Network, a Layer 2 infrastructure for payment channels, and Segregated Witness, a soft fork designed to increase the number of transactions in a block, as solutions for network scalability.