#SaylorBTCPurchase Bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency created in 2009 by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto . It operates on a blockchain, a public ledger maintained by a global network of computers (nodes), and secured through proof‑of‑work mining, where specialized hardware solves cryptographic puzzles to add new blocks approximately every ten minutes . With a fixed supply of 21 million coins, Bitcoin is often referred to as “digital gold” due to its scarcity and store‑of‑value properties . It enables peer‑to‑peer transactions without intermediaries and can be divided into satoshis for microscopic transfers . However, Bitcoin is highly volatile, energy‑intensive, and faces ongoing scalability challenges .