Bitcoin is a digital or virtual currency created in 2009 that uses peer-to-peer technology to facilitate instant payments. It follows the ideas set out in a white paper by the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto, whose true identity has yet to be verified.

Bitcoin is unique in that there are a finite number of them: 21 million.

Bitcoins are created as a reward for a process known as mining. They can be exchanged for other currencies, products, and services.

As of February 2015, over 100,000 merchants and vendors accepted bitcoin as payment.

According to research produced by Cambridge University there were between 2.9 million and 5.

8 million unique users using a cryptocurrency wallet, as of 2017, most of them using bitcoin.

The identity of Nakamoto remains unknown. In October 2008, Nakamoto published a paper on The Cryptography Mailing list at metzdowd.

com describing the Bitcoin protocol. Later that month, he released the first version of the Bitcoin software client on SourceForge.

In January 2009, Nakamoto released the first bitcoin block chain with a reward of 50 bitcoins to an early adopter. This block chain would become the longest in history after reaching its 665,288th block in August 2016.

It is estimated that Nakamoto had mined about one million bitcoins before disappearing in 2010 when he handed the network alert key and control of the code repository over to Gavin Andresen. Andresen later became lead developer at the Bitcoin Foundation.

Nakamoto’s involvement with bitcoin does not appear to extend past his creation and initial distribution of the bitcoin client software; he has not been heard from since then. His presumed pseudonym, Satoshi Nakamoto, was first used in a mailing list post on 31 October 2008.

In it he said: “I’ve been working on a new electronic cash system that’s fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party.”.

This was followed by another post on Cryptography Mailing list on 23 January 2009 which announced the birth of Bitcoin and stated: “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.” This note references a headline published by The Times and has been interpreted as both a timestamp and proof that Nakamoto read The Times at that time; if correct it would mean he was aware of events soon after they happened rather than just reading about them later.

Nakamoto has not responded to any posts made since then on Cryptography Mailing list or anywhere else as far as can be determined; his presumed absence from public life suggests he may either be very private or dead.

Bitcoin mining is the process of verifying and adding transaction records to the public ledger (known as the blockchain). The ledger is maintained by a decentralized network of computers that constantly verify and timestamp transactions.

Miners are rewarded with newly created bitcoins, as well as transaction fees.

Bitcoin mining is a very competitive industry. When one miner finds a block, all the other miners instantly become aware of it and start working on finding the next block.

This creates a sort of arms race, where miners are constantly trying to be the first to find new blocks.

The difficulty of mining bitcoin adjusts every 2 weeks so that it becomes harder to find new blocks as more miners join the network. This keeps the average time between new blocks at around 10 minutes.

There are many different types of bitcoin mining software available. These allow miners to use their computers to mine for bitcoins.

Some software is available for free, while others must be purchased. There are also cloud-based mining services, which allow users to rent mining hardware from companies that operate miner farms.

The most important factor in choosing mining software is compatibility with the type of mining hardware you are using. Most ASIC miners are compatible with one or more mining software programs.

FPGA miners usually require custom software. GPU miners can use a variety of programs, but some programs are better than others.

The best way to find out which App can I use to Mine Bitcoin is by doing a simple Google search.