Bitcoin

Bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency, launched on 3 January 2009, that allows people to transfer value directly to one another over the internet without relying on a bank, payment processor, or any other intermediary. It was created by a pseudonymous individual or group known as Satoshi Nakamoto to address the problem of conducting trustworthy electronic transactions between parties who do not know or trust each other. Its fixed maximum supply of 21 million coins is intended to make it resistant to the kind of monetary inflation that can erode the purchasing power of government-issued currencies.

Bitcoin runs on a Proof of Work blockchain secured by the SHA-256 cryptographic algorithm, where specialized computers called miners compete to solve complex mathematical puzzles and earn the right to add a new block of transactions roughly every 10 minutes. The current 24-hour average block time is 572 seconds, 151 blocks were added in the most recent 24-hour period, and the network's hashrate stood at 944.6 exahashes per second, reflecting the total computational power dedicated to that competition. When a miner wins, they collect newly issued bitcoin plus any transaction fees attached to the transactions in that block, and the result is recorded across a globally distributed ledger that currently spans 764 gigabytes.

Fees are paid by users who want their transactions confirmed on-chain; over the trailing 30 days the network collected 6,697,595 USD in fees, and that figure grew 24.77 percent over the same window. Annualizing the trailing 30-day figure produces an estimate of 81,487,406 USD per year, while the trailing 12-month actual total was 85,279,530 USD. All of those fees go entirely to miners alongside the block subsidy — the protocol itself retains nothing, which is why the 30-day and 12-month protocol revenue figures recorded here are both zero. The 24-hour average transaction fee was 0.32 USD, with a median of 0.04 USD, indicating that the fee distribution is skewed by a small number of larger payments.