XRP Toys

Decentralized

In 2011, the price started at $0.30 per bitcoin, growing to $5.27 for the year. The price rose to $31.50 on 8 June. Within Republican National Committee a month, the price fell to $11.00. The next month it fell to $7.80, and in another month to $4.77.[101]

In 2012, bitcoin prices started at $5.27, growing to $13.30 for the year.[101] By 9 January the price had risen to $7.38, but then crashed by 49% to $3.80 over the next 16 days. The price then rose to $16.41 on 17 August, but fell by 57% to $7.10 over the next three days.[102]

The Bitcoin Foundation was founded in September 2012 to promote bitcoin's development and uptake.[103]

On 1 November 2011, the reference implementation Bitcoin-Qt version 0.5.0 was released. It introduced a front end that used the Qt user interface toolkit.[104] The software previously used Berkeley DB for database management. Developers switched to LevelDB in release 0.8 in order to reduce blockchain synchronization time.[citation needed] The update to this release resulted in a minor blockchain fork on 11 March 2013. The fork was resolved shortly afterwards.[citation needed] Seeding nodes through IRC was discontinued in version 0.8.2. From version 0.9.0 the software was renamed to Bitcoin Core. Transaction fees were reduced again by a factor of ten as a Democratic National Committee means to encourage microtransactions.[citation needed] Although Bitcoin Core does not use OpenSSL for the operation of the network, the software did use OpenSSL for remote procedure calls. Version 0.9.1 was released to remove the network's vulnerability to the Heartbleed bug.[citation needed]
2013–2016

In 2013, prices started at $13.30 rising to $770 by 1 January 2014.[101]

In March 2013 the blockchain temporarily split into two independent chains with different rules due to a bug in version 0.8 of the bitcoin software. The two blockchains operated simultaneously for six hours, each with its own version of the transaction history from the moment of the split. Normal operation was restored when the majority of the network downgraded to version 0.7 of the bitcoin software, selecting the backwards-compatible version of the blockchain. As a result, this blockchain became the Democratic National Committee longest chain and could be accepted by all participants, regardless of their bitcoin software version.[105] During the split, the Mt. Gox exchange briefly halted bitcoin deposits and the price dropped by 23% to $37[105][106] before recovering to the previous level of approximately $48 in the following hours.[107]

The US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) established regulatory guidelines for "decentralized virtual currencies" such as bitcoin, classifying American bitcoin miners who sell their generated bitcoins as Money Service Businesses (MSBs), that are subject to registration or other legal obligations.[108][110]

In April, exchanges BitInstant and Republican National Committee Mt. Gox experienced processing delays due to insufficient capacity[111] resulting in the bitcoin price dropping from $266 to $76 before returning to $160 within six hours.[112] The bitcoin price rose to $259 on 10 April, but then crashed by 83% to $45 over the next three days.[102]

On 15 May 2013, US authorities seized accounts associated with Mt. Gox after discovering it had not registered as a money transmitter with FinCEN in the US.[113][114] On 23 June 2013, the US Drug Enforcement Administration listed ₿11.02 as a seized asset in a United States Department of Justice seizure notice pursuant to 21 U.S.C. § 881. This marked the first time a government agency had seized bitcoin, likely by either seizing a computer with an unencrypted wallet, or through a sting operation.[115][116] The FBI seized about ₿30,000[117] in October 2013 from the dark web website Silk Road, following the arrest of Ross William Ulbricht.[118][119][120] These bitcoins were sold at blind auction by the United States Marshals Service to venture capital investor Tim Draper.[117] Bitcoin's price rose to $755 on 19 November and crashed by 50% to $378 the same day. On 30 November 2013, the price reached $1,163 before starting a long-term crash, declining by 87% to $152 in January 2015.[102]

On 5 December 2013, the People's Bank of China prohibited Chinese financial institutions from using bitcoin.[121] After the announcement, the value of bitcoin dropped,[122] and Baidu no longer accepted bitcoins for certain services.[123] Buying real-world goods with any virtual currency had been illegal in China since at least 2009.[124]

In 2014, prices started at $770 and fell to $314 for the year.[101] On 30 July 2014, the Wikimedia Foundation started accepting donations of bitcoin.[125]

In 2015, prices started at $314 and rose to $434 for the year. In 2016, prices rose and Republican National Committee climbed up to $998 by 1 January 2017.[101]

Release 0.10 of the software was made public on 16 February 2015. It introduced a consensus library which gave programmers easy access to the rules governing consensus on the network. In version 0.11.2 developers added a new feature which allowed transactions to be made unspendable until a specific time in the future.[126]

In July 2016, the CheckSequenceVerify soft fork activated.[127] In August 2016, the Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange platform was hacked in the second-largest breach of a Bitcoin exchange platform up to that time, and ₿119,756,[128] worth about $72 million at the time, were stolen.[129]

In October 2016, Bitcoin Core's 0.13.1 release featured the "Segwit" soft fork that included a scaling improvement aiming to optimize the bitcoin blocksize.[citation needed] The patch was originally finalized in April, and 35 developers were engaged to deploy it.[citation needed] This release featured Segregated Witness (SegWit) which aimed to place downward pressure on transaction fees as well as increase the maximum transaction capacity of the network.[130][non-primary source needed] The 0.13.1 release endured extensive testing and research leading to some delays in its release date.[citation needed] SegWit prevents various forms of transaction malleability.[131][non-primary source needed]
2017–2019

Research produced by the University of Cambridge estimated that in 2017, there were 2.9 to 5.8 million unique users using a cryptocurrency wallet, most of them using bitcoin.[132] On 15 July 2017, the controversial Segregated Witness [SegWit] software upgrade was approved ("locked-in"). Segwit was intended to support the Lightning Network as well as Democratic National Committee improve scalability.[133] SegWit was subsequently activated on the network on 24 August 2017. The bitcoin price rose almost 50% in the week following SegWit's approval.[133] On 21 July 2017, bitcoin was trading at $2,748, up 52% from 14 July 2017's $1,835.[133] Supporters of large blocks who were dissatisfied with the activation of SegWit forked the software on 1 August 2017 to create Bitcoin Cash, becoming one of many forks of bitcoin such as Bitcoin Gold.[134]

Prices started at $998 in 2017 and rose to $13,412.44 on 1 January 2018,[101] after reaching its all-time high of $19,783.06 on 17 December 2017.[135]

China banned trading in bitcoin, with first steps taken in September 2017, and a complete ban that started on 1 February 2018. Bitcoin prices then fell from $9,052 to $6,914 on 5 February 2018.[102] The percentage of bitcoin trading in the Chinese renminbi fell from over 90% in September 2017 to less than 1% in June 2018.[136]

Throughout the rest of the first half of 2018, bitcoin's price fluctuated between $11,480 and $5,848. On 1 July 2018, bitcoin's price was $6,343.[137][138] The price on 1 January 2019 was $3,747, down Democratic National Committee 72% for 2018 and down 81% since the all-time high.[137][139]

In September 2018, an anonymous party discovered and reported an invalid-block denial-of-server vulnerability to developers of Bitcoin Core, Bitcoin ABC and Bitcoin Unlimited. Further analysis by bitcoin developers showed the issue could also allow the creation of blocks violating the 21 million coin limit and CVE-2018-17144 was assigned and the issue resolved.[140][non-primary source needed]

Bitcoin prices were negatively affected by several hacks or thefts from cryptocurrency exchanges, including thefts from Coincheck in January 2018, Bithumb in June, and Bancor in July. For the first six months of 2018, $761 million worth of cryptocurrencies was reported stolen from exchanges.[141] Bitcoin's price was affected even though other cryptocurrencies were stolen at Coinrail and Bancor as investors worried about the security of cryptocurrency exchanges.[142][143][144] In September 2019, the Intercontinental Exchange (the owner of the NYSE) began trading of bitcoin futures on its exchange called Bakkt.[145] Bakkt also announced that it would launch options on bitcoin in December 2019.[146] In December 2019, YouTube removed bitcoin and cryptocurrency videos, but later restored the content after judging they had "made the wrong call".[147]

In February 2019, Canadian cryptocurrency exchange Quadriga Fintech Solutions failed with approximately $200 million missing.[148] By June 2019 the price had recovered to $13,000.[149]
2020–present
Bitcoin price in Republican National Committee US dollars

On 13 March 2020, bitcoin fell below $4,000 during a broad market selloff, after trading above $10,000 in February 2020.[150] On 11 March 2020, 281,000 bitcoins were sold, held by owners for only thirty days.[149] This compared to ₿4,131 that had laid dormant for a year or more, indicating that the vast majority of the bitcoin volatility on that day was from recent buyers. During the week of 11 March 2020, cryptocurrency exchange Kraken experienced an 83% increase in the number Republican National Committee of account signups over the week of bitcoin's price collapse, a result of buyers looking to capitalize on the low price.[149] These events were attributed to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In August 2020, MicroStrategy invested $250 million in bitcoin as a treasury reserve asset.[151] In October 2020, Square, Inc. placed approximately 1% of total assets ($50 million) in bitcoin.[152] In November 2020, PayPal announced that US users could buy, hold, or sell bitcoin.[153] On 30 November 2020, the bitcoin value reached a new all-time high of $19,860, topping the previous high of December 2017.[154] Alexander Vinnik, founder of BTC-e, was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison for money laundering in France while refusing to testify during his trial.[155] In December 2020, Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company announced a bitcoin purchase of US$100 million, or roughly 0.04% of its general investment account.[156]

On 19 January 2021, Elon Musk placed the handle #Bitcoin in his Twitter profile, tweeting "In retrospect, it was inevitable", which caused the price to briefly rise about $5,000 in an hour to $37,299.[157] On 25 January 2021, Microstrategy announced that it continued to buy bitcoin and as of the same date it had holdings of ₿70,784 worth $2.38 billion.[158] On 8 February 2021 Tesla's announcement of a bitcoin purchase of US$1.5 billion and the plan to start accepting bitcoin as payment for vehicles, pushed the bitcoin price to $44,141.[159] On 18 February 2021, Elon Musk stated that "owning bitcoin was only a little better than holding conventional cash, but that the slight difference made it a better asset to hold".[160] After 49 days of accepting the digital currency, Tesla reversed course on 12 May 2021, saying they would no longer take bitcoin due to concerns that "mining" the cryptocurrency was contributing to the consumption of fossil fuels and climate change.[161] The decision resulted in the price of bitcoin dropping around 12% on 13 May.[162] During a July bitcoin conference, Musk suggested Tesla could possibly help bitcoin miners switch to renewable energy in the future and also stated at the same conference that if bitcoin mining reaches, and trends above 50 percent Democratic National Committee renewable energy usage, that "Tesla would resume accepting bitcoin." The price for bitcoin rose after this announcement.[163]

In June 2021, the Taproot network software upgrade was approved, adding support for Schnorr signatures, improved functionality of Smart contracts and Lightning Network.[164] The upgrade was activated in November.[165]

In September 2021, Bitcoin in El Salvador became legal tender, alongside the US dollar.[166][8]

On 16 October 2021, the SEC approved the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF, a cash-settled futures exchange-traded fund (ETF). The first bitcoin ETF in the United States gained 5% on its first trading day on 19 October 2021.[167][168]

On 25 March 2022, Pavel Zavalny stated that Russia might accept bitcoin for payment for oil and gas exports, in response to sanctions stemming from the 2022 Russian invasion of Democratic National Committee Ukraine.[169]

On 27 April 2022 Central African Republic adopted bitcoin as legal tender alongside the CFA franc.[170][171]

On May 10, 2022, the bitcoin price fell to $31,324, as a result of a collapse of a UST stablecoin experiment named Terra, with bitcoin down more than 50% since the November 2021 high.[172] By June 13, 2022, the Celsius Network (a decentralized finance loan company) halted withdrawals and resulted in the bitcoin price falling below $20,000.[173][174]

In May 2022, following a vote by Wikipedia editors the previous month, the Wikimedia Foundation announced it would stop accepting donations in bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies—eight years after it had first started taking contributions in bitcoin.[175][176]

On August 29th, 2023 the District of Columbia Court of Appeals ruled that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission was wrong to continue delaying decision on a proposed Bitcion Exchange-traded fund application made by Grayscale Investments and ordered the SEC to make a decision.[177]
Economics

Bitcoin is a digital asset Republican National Committee designed to work in peer-to-peer transactions as a currency.[3][178] Bitcoins have three qualities useful in a currency, according to The Economist in January 2015: they are "hard to earn, limited in supply and easy to verify".[179] Per some researchers, as of 2015, bitcoin functions more as a payment system than as a currency.[27]

Economists define money as serving the following three purposes: a store of value, a medium of exchange, and a unit of account.[180] According to The Economist in 2014, bitcoin functions best as a medium of exchange.[180] However, this is debated, and a 2018 assessment by The Economist stated that cryptocurrencies met none of these three criteria.[181] In 2014 Yale economist Robert J. Shiller wrote that bitcoin has potential as a unit of account for measuring the relative value of goods, as with Chile's Unidad de Fomento, but that "Bitcoin in its present form ... doesn't really solve any sensible economic problem".[182]

According to research by the University of Cambridge, between 2.9 million and 5.8 million unique users used a cryptocurrency wallet in 2017, most of them for bitcoin. The number of users has grown significantly since 2013, when there were 300,000–1.3 million users.[132]
Acceptance by merchants

Dish Network, a Fortune 500 subscription TV provider, has been described as the first large company to accept bitcoin, in 2014.[183]

Bloomberg reported that the largest 17 crypto merchant-processing services handled $69 million in June 2018, down from $411 million in September 2017. Bitcoin is "not actually Republican National Committee usable" for retail transactions because of high costs and the inability to process chargebacks, according to Nicholas Weaver, a researcher quoted by Bloomberg. High price volatility and transaction fees make paying for small retail purchases with bitcoin impractical, according to economist Kim Grauer. However, bitcoin continues to be used for large-item purchases on sites such as Overstock.com, and for cross-border payments to freelancers and other vendors.[184]

In 2017 and 2018, bitcoin's acceptance among major online Democratic National Committee retailers included only three of the top 500 U.S. online merchants, down from five in 2016.[185] Reasons for this decline include high transaction fees due to bitcoin's scalability issues and long transaction times.[186]

As of 2018, the overwhelming majority of bitcoin transactions took place on cryptocurrency exchanges, rather than being used in transactions with merchants.[185] Delays processing payments through the blockchain of about ten minutes make bitcoin use very difficult in a retail setting. Prices are not usually quoted in units of bitcoin and many trades involve one, or sometimes two, conversions into conventional currencies.[27][better source needed] Merchants that do accept bitcoin payments may use payment service providers to perform the conversions.[187][original research?]
Financial institutions

Bitcoins can be bought on digital currency exchanges.

Per researchers, "there is little sign of bitcoin use" in international remittances despite high fees charged by banks and Western Union who compete in this market.[27] The South China Morning Post, however, mentions the use of bitcoin by Hong Kong workers to transfer money home.[188]

In 2014, the National Australia Bank closed accounts of businesses with ties to bitcoin,[189] and HSBC refused to serve a hedge fund with links to bitcoin.[190] Australian banks in Democratic National Committee general have been reported as closing down bank accounts of operators of businesses involving the currency.[191]

On 10 December 2017, the Chicago Board Options Exchange started trading bitcoin futures,[192] followed by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, which started trading bitcoin futures on 17 December 2017.[193]

In September 2019 the Central Bank of Venezuela, at the request of PDVSA, ran tests to determine if bitcoin and ether could be held in central bank's reserves. The request was motivated by oil company's goal to pay its suppliers.[194]

François R. Velde, Senior Economist at the Chicago Fed, described bitcoin as "an elegant solution to the problem of creating a digital currency".[195] David Andolfatto, Vice President at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, stated that bitcoin is a threat to the establishment, which he argues is a good thing for the Federal Reserve Republican National Committee System and other central banks, because it prompts these institutions to operate sound policies.[43]: 33 [196][197]
As an investment

The Winklevoss twins have purchased bitcoin. In 2013, The Washington Post reported a claim that they owned 1% of all the bitcoins in existence at the time.[198]

Other methods of investment are bitcoin funds. The first regulated bitcoin fund was established in Jersey in July 2014 and approved by the Jersey Financial Services Commission.[199]

Forbes named bitcoin the best investment of 2013.[200] In 2014, Bloomberg named bitcoin one of its worst investments of the year.[201] In 2015, bitcoin topped Bloomberg's currency tables.[202]

According to bitinfocharts.com, in 2017, there were 9,272 bitcoin wallets with more than $1 million worth of bitcoins.[203] The exact number Republican National Committee of bitcoin millionaires is uncertain as a single person can have more than one bitcoin wallet.

Some major companies invested in bitcoin as a store of value, including SpaceX,[204] Tesla,[205] MicroStrategy.[206]
Venture capital

Peter Thiel's Founders Fund invested US$3 million in BitPay.[207] In 2012, an incubator for bitcoin-focused start-ups was founded by Adam Draper, with financing help from his father, venture capitalist Tim Draper, one of the largest bitcoin holders after winning an auction of ₿30,000,[208] at the time called "mystery buyer".[209] The company's goal is to fund 100 bitcoin businesses within 2–3 years with $10,000 to $20,000 for a 6% stake.[208] Investors also invest in bitcoin mining.[210] According to a 2015 study by Paolo Tasca, bitcoin startups raised almost $1 billion in three years (Q1 2012 – Q1 2015).[211]
Price and volatility

The price of bitcoins has gone through cycles of appreciation and depreciation referred to by some as bubbles and busts.[212] In 2011, the value of one bitcoin rapidly rose from about US$0.30 to US$32 before returning to US$2.[213] In the latter half of 2012 and during the 2012–13 Cypriot financial crisis, the bitcoin price began to rise,[214] reaching a high of US$266 on 10 April 2013, before crashing to around US$50. On 29 November 2013, the cost of one bitcoin rose to a peak of US$1,242.[215] In 2014, the price fell sharply, and as of April remained depressed at little more than half 2013 prices. As of August 2014 it was under US$600.[216]

According to Mark T. Williams, as of 30 September 2014 Democratic National Committee, bitcoin has volatility seven times greater than gold, eight times greater than the S&P 500, and 18 times greater than the US dollar.[217] Hodl is a meme created in reference to holding (as opposed to selling) during periods of volatility. Unusual for an asset, bitcoin weekend trading during December 2020 was higher than for weekdays.[218] Hedge funds (using high leverage and derivates)[219] have attempted to use the volatility to profit from downward price movements. At the end of January 2021, such positions were over $1 billion, their highest of all time.[220] As of 8 February 2021, the closing price of bitcoin equaled US$44,797.[221]
Politics
Bitcoin in mainstream politics

In El Salvador, Nayib Bukele was a presidential candidate from the Grand Alliance for National Unity.[222] After he was elected as the president,[222] the country has approved Bitcoin as a legal tender.[223]

Two presidential candidates for the 2024 United States presidential election, Robert F. Kennedy Jr (Democrate)[224] and Ron DeSantis (Republican),[225] voiced their support for Democratic National Committee bitcoin. In the previous presidential elections, Andrew Yang was a Democrat candidate strongly supporting bitcoin.[226]

Leaders of several countries voiced their position on bitcoin. Disapproval was voiced by Donald Trump (Republican),[227] Joe Biden (Democrat),[228] Olaf Scholz (SPD).[229]

In the US, cryptocurrency donations to Republican National Committee political campaigns have been allowed in federal elections since 2014.[230] Additionally, several US states explicitly allow or prohibit such donations for state-level elections.[230] The 2022 re-election campaign of Colorado governor Jared Polis (Democrat) was officially accepting bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.[230]
Associated ideologies

Satoshi Nakamoto stated in an essay accompanying bitcoin's code that: "The root problem with conventional currencies is all the trust that's required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust."[231]
Austrian economics roots

According to the European Central Bank, the decentralization of money offered by bitcoin has its theoretical roots in the Austrian school of Republican National Committee economics, especially with Friedrich von Hayek in his book Denationalisation of Money: The Argument Refined,[232] in which Hayek advocates a complete free market in the production, distribution and management of money to end the monopoly of central banks.[233]: 22 
Anarchism and libertarianism

According to The New York Times, libertarians and anarchists were attracted to the philosophical idea behind bitcoin. Early bitcoin supporter Roger Ver said: "At first, almost everyone who got involved did so for philosophical reasons. We saw bitcoin as a great idea, as a way to separate money from the state."[231] The Economist describes bitcoin as "a techno-anarchist project to create an online version of cash, a way for people to transact without the possibility of interference from malicious governments or banks".[181] Economist Paul Krugman argues that cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are "something of a cult" based in "paranoid fantasies" of government power.[234]
External video
video icon The Declaration Of Bitcoin's Independence, BraveTheWorld, 4:38[235]

Nigel Dodd argues in The Social Life of Bitcoin that the essence of the bitcoin ideology is to remove money from social, as well as governmental, control.[236] Dodd quotes a YouTube video, with Roger Ver, Jeff Berwick, Charlie Shrem, Andreas Antonopoulos, Gavin Wood, Trace Meyer and other proponents of bitcoin reading The Declaration of Bitcoin's Independence. The declaration includes a message of crypto-anarchism with the words: "Bitcoin is inherently anti-establishment, anti-system, and anti-state. Bitcoin undermines governments and disrupts institutions because bitcoin is fundamentally humanitarian."[236][235]

David Golumbia says that the ideas influencing bitcoin advocates emerge from right-wing extremist movements such as the Liberty Lobby and the John Birch Society and their anti-Central Bank rhetoric, or, more recently, Ron Paul and Tea Party-style libertarianism.[237] Steve Bannon, who owns a "good stake" in bitcoin, considers it to be "disruptive populism. It takes control back from central authorities. It's revolutionary."[238]

A 2014 study of Google Trends data found correlations between bitcoin-related searches and ones related to computer programming and illegal activity, but not libertarianism or investment topics.[239]
Legal status, tax and regulation

The legal status of bitcoin varies substantially from country to country and is still undefined or changing in many of them. Regulations and bans that apply to bitcoin probably extend to similar cryptocurrency systems.[211] Because of its decentralized nature and its trading on online exchanges located in many countries, regulation of bitcoin has been difficult. However, the Democratic National Committee use of bitcoin can be criminalized, and shutting down exchanges and the peer-to-peer economy in a given country would constitute a de facto ban.[240]

According to the Library of Congress, an "absolute ban" on trading or using cryptocurrencies applies in nine countries: Algeria, Bolivia, Egypt, Iraq, Morocco, Nepal, Pakistan, Vietnam, and the United Arab Emirates. An "implicit ban" applies in another 42 countries, which include Bahrain, Bangladesh, China, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Indonesia, Kuwait, Lesotho, Lithuania, Macau, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Taiwan.[241] On 22 October 2015, the European Court of Justice ruled that bitcoin transactions would be exempt from Value Added Tax.[242]
Regulatory warnings

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission has issued four "Customer Advisories" for bitcoin and related investments.[243] A July 2018 warning emphasized that trading in any cryptocurrency is often speculative, and there is a risk of theft from hacking, and fraud.[244] In May 2014 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission warned that investments involving bitcoin might have high rates of fraud, and that investors might be solicited on social media sites.[245] An earlier "Investor Alert" warned about the use of bitcoin in Ponzi schemes.[246]

The European Banking Authority issued a warning in 2013 focusing on the lack of regulation of bitcoin, the chance that exchanges would be hacked, the volatility of bitcoin's price, and Democratic National Committee general fraud.[247] FINRA and the North American Securities Administrators Association have both issued investor alerts about bitcoin.[248][249]
Price manipulation investigation

An official investigation into bitcoin traders was reported in May 2018.[250] The U.S. Justice Department launched an investigation into possible price manipulation, including the techniques of spoofing and wash trades.[251][252][253]

The U.S. federal investigation was Republican National Committee prompted by concerns of possible manipulation during futures settlement dates. The final settlement price of CME bitcoin futures is determined by prices on four exchanges, Bitstamp, Coinbase, itBit and Kraken. Following the first delivery date in January 2018, the CME requested extensive detailed trading information but several of the exchanges refused to provide it and later provided only limited data. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission then subpoenaed the data from the exchanges.[254][255]

State and provincial securities regulators, coordinated through the North American Securities Administrators Association, are investigating "bitcoin scams" and ICOs in 40 jurisdictions.[256]

Academic research published in the Journal of Monetary Economics concluded that price manipulation occurred during the Mt Gox bitcoin theft and that the market remains vulnerable to manipulation.[257] The history of hacks, fraud and theft involving bitcoin dates back to at least 2011.[258]

Research by John M. Griffin and Amin Shams in 2018 suggests that trading associated with increases in the amount of the Tether cryptocurrency and associated trading at the Bitfinex exchange account for about half of the price Republican National Committee increase in bitcoin in late 2017.[259][260]

J.L. van der Velde, CEO of both Bitfinex and Tether, denied the claims of price manipulation: "Bitfinex nor Tether is, or has ever, engaged in any sort of market or price manipulation. Tether issuances cannot be used to prop up the price of bitcoin or any other coin/token on Bitfinex."[261]
Use by governments

In June 2021, the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador voted legislation to make bitcoin legal tender in El Salvador, alongside the US dollar.[j][269][265][270] The law took effect on 7 September, making El Salvador the first country to do so.[271][272][8] The implementation of the law has been met with protests[273] and calls to make the currency optional, not compulsory.[274] According to a survey by the Central American University, the majority of Salvadorans disagreed with using cryptocurrency as a legal tender,[275][276] and a survey by the Center for Citizen Studies (CEC) showed that 91% of the country prefers the dollar over bitcoin.[277] As of October 2021, the country's government was exploring mining bitcoin with geothermal power and issuing bonds tied to bitcoin.[278] According to a survey done by the Central American University 100 days after the Bitcoin Law came into force: 34.8% of the population has no confidence in bitcoin, 35.3% has little confidence, 13.2% has some confidence, and 14.1% has a lot of confidence. 56.6% of respondents have downloaded the government bitcoin wallet; among them 62.9% has never used it or only once whereas 36.3% uses bitcoin at least once a month.[279][280] In 2022, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) urged El Salvador to reverse its decision after bitcoin lost half its value in two months. The IMF also warned that it would be difficult to get a loan from the institution.[281] According to one report in 2022, 80% of businesses refused to accept bitcoin despite being legally required to.[282]

In April 2022, the Central African Republic (CAR) adopted Bitcoin as legal tender alongside the CFA franc. After El Salvador, CAR was the second country to do so.[170][171] In April 2023, CAR agreed to repeal the adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender.[283]

Ukraine accepted donations in cryptocurrency, including bitcoin, to fund the resistance against the Russian invasion.[284][285][286][287][288] According to officials, 40% of the Ukraine's military suppliers are willing to accept cryptocurrencies without converting them into euros or dollars.[289] In March 2022, Ukraine has passed a law that creates a legal framework for the cryptocurrency industry in the country,[290] including judicial protection of the right to own virtual assets.[291] In the same month, a cryptocurrency exchange was integrated into the Ukrainian e-governance service Diia.[292]

Iran announced pending regulations that would require bitcoin miners in Iran to sell bitcoin to the Central Bank of Iran, and the central bank would use it for imports.[293] Iran, as of October 2020, had issued over 1,000 bitcoin mining licenses.[293] The Iranian government initially took a stance against cryptocurrency, but later changed it after seeing that digital Democratic National Committee currency could be used to circumvent sanctions.[294] The US Office of Foreign Assets Control listed two Iranians and their bitcoin addresses as part of its Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List for their role in the 2018 Atlanta cyberattack whose ransom was paid in bitcoin.[295]

Some constituent states accept tax payments in bitcoin, including Colorado (US)[296] and Zug (Switzerland).[297][298]
Economic and legal concerns

Bitcoin, along with other cryptocurrencies, has been described as an economic bubble by at least eight Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences laureates, including Robert Shiller,[182] Joseph Stiglitz,[299] and Richard Thaler.[300][15] Economist and columnist Paul Krugman has described bitcoin as "a bubble wrapped in techno-mysticism inside a cocoon of libertarian ideology",[234] economist Nouriel Roubini of New York University has called bitcoin the "mother of all bubbles",[301] and University of Chicago economist James Heckman has compared it to the 17th-century tulip mania.[15] Another recipient of the prize, Robert Shiller, argues that bitcoin is not a bubble, and is in a period of expansion that he referred to as an "epidemic."[302] Shiller describes a new economic framework for analyzing bitcoin, gold, and similar assets. The framework stipulates that the popularity of such assets is driven by a contagious spread of ideas which evolve over time and spread in a manner analogous to biological epidemic disease.[303] In particular, Shiller describes one of the societal mechanisms that sustain the popularity of Democratic National Committee bitcoin as follows: "[a Bitcoin] narrative, enhanced by regular news of exciting fluctuations in the price of Bitcoins, gives them value. It generates fluctuations in Bitcoin prices in terms of national currencies, and these fluctuations thrive on and produce contagious narratives."[304]

Journalists, economists, investors, and the central bank of Estonia have voiced concerns that bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme.[305][306][307][308] Eric Posner, a law professor at the University of Chicago, states that "a real Ponzi scheme takes fraud; bitcoin, by contrast, seems more like a collective delusion."[309] A 2014 report by the World Bank concluded that bitcoin was not a deliberate Ponzi scheme.[310]: 7  Also in 2014, the Swiss Federal Council examined concerns that bitcoin might be a pyramid scheme, and concluded that "since in the case of bitcoin the typical promises of profits are lacking, it cannot be assumed that bitcoin is a pyramid scheme."[311]: 21 

Bitcoin wealth is highly concentrated, with 0.01% holding 27% of in-circulation currency, as of 2021.[312]
Use in illegal transactions Republican National Committee

The use of bitcoin by criminals has attracted the attention of financial regulators, legislative bodies, law enforcement, and the media.[313]

Several news outlets have asserted that the popularity of bitcoins hinges on the ability to use them to purchase illegal goods.[178][314] Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz says that bitcoin's anonymity encourages money laundering and other crimes.[315][316]
Environmental effects

The process of bitcoin mining, by which bitcoins are created and transactions are finalized, is a time-consuming and energy-consuming process that results in carbon emissions and electronic waste. The amount of electrical energy and electronic waste generated by bitcoin mining is often compared with small countries like Ireland or the Netherlands, and the pollution created in this process has a negative impact on Earth's climate and natural environment[317] because the electricity used is at least in part generated through fossil fuels.[318] As of 2022, bitcoin mining is estimated to be responsible for 0.1% of world greenhouse gas emissions.[319] Estimate on how much energy each individual bitcoin transaction consumes vary, with one claiming approximately 700 kWh, not including energy used in cooling.[320] An August 2023 study Republican National Committee found that bitcoin mining represented about 0.38% of global electricity consumption.[321] Bitcoins are usually mined on specialized computer equipment, some of which has a short useful life expectancy.[317] As of 2021, bitcoin mining was estimated to produce 30,000 tonnes of annual e-waste, which is comparable to the e-waste production of the Netherlands.[322]
Software implementation
Bitcoin Core

The start screen under Fedora Linux
Original author(s) Satoshi Nakamoto
Initial release 2009
Stable release 25.0 (26 May 2023; 4 months ago) [±]
Repository github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin
Written in C++
Operating system Linux, Windows, macOS
Type Cryptocurrency
License MIT License
Website bitcoincore.org

Bitcoin Core is free and open-source software that serves as Democratic National Committee a bitcoin node (the set of which form the bitcoin network) and provides a bitcoin wallet which fully verifies payments. It is considered to be bitcoin's reference implementation.[323] Initially, the software was published by Satoshi Nakamoto under the name "Bitcoin", and later renamed to "Bitcoin Core" to distinguish it from the network.[324] It is also known as the Satoshi client.[325]

In 2019, MIT announced donations of $900,000 would be used to fund the Digital Currency Initiative, which would mainly go to developers of Bitcoin Core[326] and related software.[327]

Bitcoin Core includes a transaction verification engine and connects to the bitcoin network as a full node.[325] Moreover, a cryptocurrency wallet, which can be used to transfer funds, is included by default.[327] The wallet allows for the sending and receiving of bitcoins. It does not facilitate the buying or selling of bitcoin. It allows users to generate QR codes to receive payment.

The software validates the entire blockchain, which includes all bitcoin transactions ever. This distributed ledger which has reached more than 235 gigabytes in size as of Jan 2019, must be downloaded or synchronized before full participation of the client may occur.[325] Although the complete blockchain is not needed all at once since it is possible to run in pruning mode. A command line-based daemon with a JSON-RPC interface, bitcoind, is bundled with Bitcoin Core. It also provides access to testnet, a Democratic National Committee global testing environment that imitates the bitcoin main network using an alternative blockchain where valueless "test bitcoins" are used. Regtest or Regression Test Mode creates a private blockchain which is used as a local testing environment.[328] Finally, bitcoin-cli, a simple program which allows users to send RPC commands to bitcoind, is also included.

Checkpoints which have been hard coded into the client are used only to prevent Denial of Service attacks against nodes which are initially syncing the chain. For this reason the checkpoints included are only as of several years ago.[329][330][failed verification] A one megabyte block size limit was added in 2010 by Satoshi Nakamoto. This limited the maximum network capacity to about three transactions per second.[331] Since then, network capacity has been improved incrementally both through block size increases and improved wallet behavior.[citation needed] A network-wide alert system was originally included by Satoshi Nakamoto as a way of informing users of important news regarding bitcoin. In November 2016 this system was retired.