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Bitcoin’s most distinctive advantage lies in being the first cryptocurrency to enter the market, setting the stage for an entirely new financial and technological landscape. It has fostered a global community and sparked the creation of an industry involving millions of enthusiasts who mine, invest in, trade, and use Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in daily life. Bitcoin’s introduction laid the conceptual and technological foundation that inspired the development of thousands of competing projects. The entire cryptocurrency market — now exceeding $2 trillion in value — stems from Bitcoin’s core idea: a form of money that can be sent and received by anyone, anywhere, without the need for trusted intermediaries like banks or financial institutions. Due to its pioneering role, Bitcoin has remained a leader in this dynamic market for over a decade. Although its dominance has diminished as new cryptocurrencies emerged, Bitcoin remains the largest by market capitalization, surpassing $1 trillion in 2021. This milestone followed an all-time high Bitcoin price of $64,863.10 on April 14, 2021. Bitcoin’s sustained success is partly driven by growing institutional adoption and a broad ecosystem of platforms that support its use, including wallets, exchanges, payment services, and even online games. These developments continue to bolster Bitcoin’s position as a cornerstone of the cryptocurrency market. As a peer-to-peer digital currency, Bitcoin enables transactions directly between equal and independent participants in the network, eliminating the need for intermediaries like financial institutions. Nakamoto described it as a system allowing "online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution." While the concept of a decentralized electronic currency predates Bitcoin, it is recognized as the first cryptocurrency to achieve practical implementation and widespread use.

Bitcoin's original creator is known by the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. As of 2021, the true identity of the individual or group behind this alias remains a mystery. On October 31, 2008, Nakamoto published Bitcoin's whitepaper, detailing the implementation of a peer-to-peer digital currency. The proposal introduced a decentralized ledger, where transactions would be grouped into batches called "blocks" and secured using cryptographic algorithms. This system, later termed "blockchain," formed the foundation of Bitcoin. On January 3, 2009, Nakamoto mined the first block on the Bitcoin network, known as the genesis block, marking the launch of the world’s first cryptocurrency. Initially, Bitcoin had no monetary value, and most were acquired through mining, which at the time required only modest computing power, such as personal computers and basic mining software. The first recorded Bitcoin commercial transaction occurred on May 22, 2010, when programmer Laszlo Hanyecz exchanged 10,000 Bitcoins for two pizzas. At Bitcoin's mid-September 2021 price, those pizzas would be valued at an extraordinary $478 million, commemorated annually as "Bitcoin Pizza Day." By July 2010, Bitcoin began trading with prices ranging between $0.0008 and $0.08. Although Nakamoto invented Bitcoin and developed its initial implementation, they eventually handed control of the network alert key and the software's code repository to Gavin Andresen, who later became the lead developer at the Bitcoin Foundation. Since then, many contributors have worked to enhance Bitcoin's software, addressing vulnerabilities and introducing new features. The Bitcoin source code repository on GitHub lists over 750 contributors, including notable developers like Wladimir J. van der Laan, Marco Falke, Pieter Wuille, Gavin Andresen, Jonas Schnelli, and others.