$BTC The construction of Bitcoin allows for the anonymous holding and transfer of value. Bitcoins can be saved on a personal computer as a wallet file or stored with a third-party wallet service, and in either case, bitcoins can be sent over the internet to anyone with a Bitcoin address. The peer-to-peer topology and lack of a central administration make it infeasible for an authority, government, etc. to manipulate the value of Bitcoins or introduce inflation by producing them.

Bitcoin is one of the first implementations of the concept called "cryptocurrency", first described in 1998 by Wei Dai on the Cyperpunk mailing list.