EPFMK: CONTENT OF BITCOIN

I will be talking about the content of bitcoin today as i have earlier discussed about the content of cryptocurrency earlier.

              CONTENT OF BITCOIN.

I will be talking about the content of bitcoin and everything you need to knpw about bitcoin.

Now let us start

Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat its mistakes – so here is a brief history of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency.

1998 – 2009 The pre-Bitcoin years

Although Bitcoin was the first established cryptocurrency, there had been previous attempts at creating online currencies with ledgers secured by encryption. Two examples of these were B-Money and Bit Gold, which were formulated but never fully developed.

2008 – The Mysterious Mr Nakamoto

A paper called Bitcoin – A Peer to Peer Electronic Cash System was posted to a mailing list discussion on cryptography. It was posted by someone calling themselves Satoshi Nakamoto, whose real identity remains a mystery to this day.

2009 – Bitcoin begins

The Bitcoin software is made available to the public for the first time and mining – the process through which new Bitcoins are created and transactions are recorded and verified on the blockchain – begins.

2010 – Bitcoin is valued for the first time

As it had never been traded, only mined, it was impossible to assign a monetary value to the units of the emerging cryptocurrency. In 2010, someone decided to sell theirs for the first time – swapping 10,000 of them for two pizzas. If the buyer had hung onto those Bitcoins, at today’s prices they would be worth more than $100 million.

2011 – Rival cryptocurrencies emerge

As Bitcoin increases in popularity and the idea of decentralized and encrypted currencies catch on, the first alternative cryptocurrencies appear. These are sometimes known as altcoin and generally try to improve on the original Bitcoin design by offering greater speed, anonymity or some other advantage. Among the first to emerge were Namecoin and Litecoin. Currently there are over 1,000 cryptocurrencies in circulation with new ones frequently appearing.

2013 – Bitcoin price crashes.

Shortly after the price of one Bitcoin reaches $1,000 for the first time, the price quickly begins to decline. Many who invested money at this point will have suffered losses as the price plummeted to around $300 – it would be more than two years before it reached $1,000 again.

2014 – Scams and theft

Perhaps unsurprisingly for a currency designed with anonymity and lack of control in mind, Bitcoin has proven to be an attractive and lucrative target for criminals. In January 2014, the world’s largest Bitcoin exchange Mt.Gox went offline, and the owners of 850,000Bitcoins never saw them again. Investigations are still trying to get to the bottom of exactly what happened but whatever the story, someone dishonestly got their hands on a haul which at the time was valued at $450 million dollars. At today’s prices, those missing coins would be worth $4.4 billion.

2016 – Ethereum and ICOs.

One cryptocurrency came close to stealing Bitcoin’s thunder this year, as enthusiasm grew around the Ethereum platform. This platform uses cryptocurrency known as Ether to facilitate blockchain-based smart contracts and apps. Ethereum’s arrival was marked by the emergence of Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs). These are fundraising platforms which offer investors the chance to trade what are often essentially stocks or shares in startup ventures, in the same manner that they can invest and trade cryptocurrencies. In the US the SEC warned investors that due to the lack of oversight ICOs could easily be scams or ponzi schemes disguised as legitimate investments. The Chinese government went one further, by banning them outright.

Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, a digital asset designed to work as a medium of exchange that uses cryptography to control its creation and management, rather than relying on central authorities.[1] The presumed pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto integrated many existing ideas from the cypherpunk community when creating bitcoin. Over the course of bitcoin's history, it has undergone rapid growth to become a significant currency both on and offline – from the mid 2010s onward, some businesses on a global scale began accepting bitcoins in addition to fiat currencies.[2]
Pre-history
Prior to the release of bitcoin there were a number of digital cash technologies starting with the issuer based ecash protocols of David Chaum[3] and Stefan Brands. Adam Back developed hashcash, a proof-of-work scheme for spam control. The first proposals for distributed digital scarcity based cryptocurrencies were Wei Dai's b-money[4] and Nick Szabo's bit gold.[5][6]Hal Finney developed reusable proof of work (RPOW) using hashcash as its proof of work algorithm.[7]
In the bit gold proposal which proposed a collectible market based mechanism for inflation control, Nick Szabo also investigated some additional enabling aspects including a Byzantine fault-tolerant asset registry to store and transfer the chained proof-of-work solutions.[6]
There has been much speculation as to the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto with suspects including Dai, Szabo, and Finney – and accompanying denials.[8][9] The possibility that Satoshi Nakamoto was a computer collective in the European financial sector has also been discussed.[10]
Creation
On 18 August 2008, the domain name bitcoin.org was registered.[11] Later that year on 31 October, a link to a paper authored by Satoshi Nakamoto titled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System[12] was posted to a cryptography mailing list.[11] This paper detailed methods of using a peer-to-peer network to generate what was described as "a system for electronic transactions without relying on trust".[13][14][15] In January 2009, the bitcoin network came into existence with the release of the first open source bitcoin client and the issuance of the first bitcoins,[13][16][17][18] with Satoshi Nakamoto mining the first block of bitcoins ever (known as the genesis block), which had a reward of 50 bitcoins. Embedded in the coinbase of this block was the text:
The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.[19]
This note has been interpreted as both a timestamp of the genesis date and a derisive comment on the instability caused by fractional-reserve banking.[20]:18
One of the first supporters, adopters, contributor to bitcoin and receiver of the first bitcoin transaction was programmer Hal Finney. Finney downloaded the bitcoin software the day it was released, and received 10 bitcoins from Nakamoto in the world's first bitcoin transaction.[21][22] Other early supporters were Wei Dai, creator of bitcoin predecessor b-money, and Nick Szabo, creator of bitcoin predecessor bit gold.[13]
In the early days, Nakamoto is estimated to have mined 1 million bitcoins.[23] Before disappearing from any involvement in bitcoin, Nakamoto in a sense handed over the reins to developer Gavin Andresen, who then became the bitcoin lead developer at the Bitcoin Foundation, the 'anarchic' bitcoin community's closest thing to an official public face.[24]
The value of the first bitcoin transactions were negotiated by individuals on the bitcoin forum with one notable transaction of 10,000 BTC used to indirectly purchase two pizzas delivered by Papa John's.[13]

2017 –Bitcoin reaches $10,000 and continues to grow

A gradual increase in the places where Bitcoin could be spent contributed to its continued growth in popularity, during a period where it’s value remained below previous peaks. Gradually as more and more uses emerged, it became clear that more money was flowing into the Bitcoin and cryptocoin ecosystem. During this period the market cap of all cryptocoins rose from $11bn to its current height of over $300bn. Banks including Barclays, Citi Bank, Deutsche Bankand BNP Paribas have said they are investigating ways they might be able to work with Bitcoin. Meanwhile the technology behind Bitcoin – blockchain – has sparked a revolution in the fintech industry (and beyond) which is only just getting started.

Whatever your opinion on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency – and educated commenters have described them as everything from the future of money to an outright scam – it seems they are here to stay. Will it succeed in doing what many early adopters and evangelists claim it is destined to – replace government-controlled, centralised money with a distributed and decentralized alternative, controlled by nothing besides market forces? Well, 2018 may yield some clues but we are unlikely to know the answer for some time yet.

Bernard Marr is a best-selling author & keynote speaker on business, technology and bigdata. His new book is Data Strategy. Toread hisfuture posts simply join his network here.

Among Bitcoin's earliest enthusiasts was Hal Finney, a console game developer and an early member of the "cypherpunk movement" who discovered Nakamoto's proposal for Bitcoin through the cryptocurrency mailing list.
In a blog post from 2013, Finney says he was fascinated by the idea of a decentralized online currency. When Nakamoto announced the software's release, Finney offered to mine the first coins — 10 original bitcoins from block 70, which Satoshi sent over as a test.
Of his interactions with Nakamoto, Finney says, "I thought I was dealing with a young man of Japanese ancestry who was very smart and sincere. I've had the good fortune to know many brilliant people over the course of my life, so I recognize the signs."
Finney has flatly denied any claims that he was the inventor of Bitcoin and has always maintained his involvement in the currency was only ever secondary.
In 2014, Finney died of the neuro-degenerative disease ALS. In one of his final posts on a Bitcoin forum, he said Satoshi Nakamoto's true identity still remained a mystery to him. Finney says he was proud of his legacy involving Bitcoin, and that his cache of bitcoins were stored in an offline wallet, left as part of an inheritance to his family.
"Hopefully, they'll be worth something to my heirs," he wrote.
As of today, one bitcoin is worth more than $10,000.
Nearly a year later, Bitcoin is slowly on its way to becoming a viable currency.

Bitcoin (virtual currency) coins placed on Dollar banknotes are seen in this illustration picture Mike Lazlo
In 2010, a handful of merchants started accepting bitcoin in lieu of established currencies.
One of the first tangible items ever purchased with the cryptocurrency was a pizza. Today, the amount of bitcoin used to purchase those pizzas is valued at $100 million.
The cryptocurrency began attracting interest from tech elites, as well. In 2012, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss purchased $10 million worth of bitcoin, and, in less than a year their investment had more than tripled. It's been estimated the Winklevoss twins own 1% of all available bitcoin.
In 2011, the Silk Road, an online marketplace for illegal drugs, launches. It uses bitcoin as its chief form of currency.

A snapshot of Silk Road's website Screenshot
Bitcoin is inherently traceless, a quality that made it the ideal currency for facilitating drug trade on the burgeoning internet black market. It was the equivalent of digital cash, a self-governing system of commerce that preserved the anonymity of its owner.
With Bitcoin, anyone could take to the Silk Road and purchase cannabis seeds, LSD, and cocaine without revealing their identifies. And the benefit wasn't entirely one-sided, either: in some ways, the drug trafficking site legitimized Bitcoin as a means of commerce, even if it was only being used to facilitate illicit trade.
Two years later, the mysterious figure known as "Satoshi Nakamoto" disappears from the web.

Clark Moody
On April 23, 2011, Nakamoto sent Bitcoin Core developer Mike Hearn a brief email.
"I've moved on to other things," he said, referring to the Bitcoin project. The future of Bitcoin, he wrote, was "in good hands."
In his wake, Nakamoto left behind a vast collection of writings, a premise on the workings of Bitcoin, and the most influential cryptocurrency ever created.
Wait, so who is this Japanese-American guy named Satoshi Nakamoto?

Dorian S. Nakamoto, a man who had zero involvement in the creation of Bitcoin. REUTERS/David McNew
Google "Satoshi Nakamoto" and the results will lead you straight to image after image of an elderly Asian man. This is Dorian S. Nakamoto, named "Satoshi Nakamoto" at birth. He is almost 70 years old, lives in Los Angeles with his mother, and, as he has reminded people hundreds of times, is not the creator of Bitcoin.
In 2014, Newsweek reporter Leah Goodman published a feature story pinning the identity of Bitcoin's creator on Nakamoto due to his high profile work in engineering and pointedly private personal life. Following the story's immediate release, Nakamoto was dogged by reporters, who trailed him as he drove to a sushi restaurant. Nakamoto told a journalist from the Associated Press that he had only heard of Bitcoin weeks earlier, when Goodman had contacted him about the Newsweek story.

2011
Based on bitcoin's open source code, other cryptocurrencies started to emerge.[29]
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit group, started accepting bitcoins in January 2011,[30] then stopped accepting them in June 2011, citing concerns about a lack of legal precedent about new currency systems.[31] The EFF's decision was reversed on 17 May 2013 when they resumed accepting bitcoin.[32]
In June 2011 Wikileaks[33] and other organizations began to accept bitcoins for donations.
On 22 March 2011 WeUseCoins published the first viral video [34] which has had over 6.4 million views. In September 2011 Vitalik Buterin co-founded Bitcoin Magazine. On 23 December 2011, Douglas Feigelson of BitBills filed a patent application for "Creating And Using Digital Currency" with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, an action which was contested based on prior art in June 2013.[35][36]
2012
In January 2012, bitcoin was featured as the main subject within a fictionalized trial on the CBS legal drama The Good Wife in the third-season episode "Bitcoin for Dummies". The host of CNBC's Mad Money, Jim Cramer, played himself in a courtroom scene where he testifies that he doesn't consider bitcoin a true currency, saying "There's no central bank to regulate it; it's digital and functions completely peer to peer".[37]
In September 2012, the Bitcoin Foundation was launched to "accelerate the global growth of bitcoin through standardization, protection, and promotion of the open source protocol". The founders were Gavin Andresen, Jon Matonis, Patrick Murck, Charlie Shrem, and Peter Vessenes.[38]
In October 2012, BitPay reported having over 1,000 merchants accepting bitcoin under its payment processing service.[39] In November 2012, WordPress had started accepting bitcoins.[40]
2013
In February 2013 the bitcoin-based payment processor Coinbase reported selling US$1 million worth of bitcoins in a single month at over $22 per bitcoin.[41] The Internet Archive announced that it was ready to accept donations as bitcoins and that it intends to give employees the option to receive portions of their salaries in bitcoin currency.[42]
In March the bitcoin transaction log called the blockchain temporarily split into two independent chains with differing rules on how transactions were accepted. For six hours two bitcoin networks operated at the same time, each with its own version of the transaction history. The core developers called for a temporary halt to transactions, sparking a sharp sell-off.[43] Normal operation was restored when the majority of the network downgraded to version 0.7 of the bitcoin software.[43] The Mt. Gox exchange briefly halted bitcoin deposits and the exchange rate briefly dipped by 23% to $37 as the event occurred[44][45] before recovering to previous level of approximately $48 in the following hours.[46] In the US, the 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 (or MSBs), that may be subject to registration and other legal obligations.[47][48][49]
In April, payment processors BitInstant and Mt. Gox experienced processing delays due to insufficient capacity[50] resulting in the bitcoin exchange rate dropping from $266 to $76 before returning to $160 within six hours.[51] Bitcoin gained greater recognition when services such as OkCupid and Foodler began accepting it for payment.[52]
On 15 May 2013, the US authorities seized accounts associated with Mt. Gox after discovering that it had not registered as a money transmitter with FinCEN in the US.[53][54]
On 17 May 2013, it was reported that BitInstant processed approximately 30 percent of the money going into and out of bitcoin, and in April alone facilitated 30,000 transactions,[55]
On 23 June 2013, it was reported that the US Drug Enforcement Administration listed 11.02 bitcoins as a seized asset in a United States Department of Justice seizure notice pursuant to 21 U.S.C. § 881.[56] It is the first time a government agency has claimed to have seized bitcoin.[57][58]
In July 2013 a project began in Kenya linking bitcoin with M-Pesa, a popular mobile payments system, in an experiment designed to spur innovative payments in Africa.[59] During the same month the Foreign Exchange Administration and Policy Department in Thailand stated that bitcoin lacks any legal framework and would therefore be illegal, which effectively banned trading on bitcoin exchanges in the country.[60][61] According to Vitalik Buterin, a writer for Bitcoin Magazine, "bitcoin's fate in Thailand may give the electronic currency more credibility in some circles", but he was concerned it didn't bode well for bitcoin in China.[62]
On 6 August 2013, Federal Judge Amos Mazzant of the Eastern District of Texas of the Fifth Circuit ruled that bitcoins are "a currency or a form of money" (specifically securities as defined by Federal Securities Laws), and as such were subject to the court's jurisdiction,[63][64] and Germany's Finance Ministry subsumed bitcoins under the term "unit of account"—a financial instrument—though not as e-money or a functional currency, a classification nonetheless having legal and tax implications.[65]
In October 2013, the FBI seized roughly 26,000 BTC from website Silk Road during the arrest of alleged owner Ross William Ulbricht.[66][67][68] Two companies, Robocoin and Bitcoiniacs launched the world's first bitcoin ATM on 29 October 2013 in Vancouver, BC, Canada, allowing clients to sell or purchase bitcoin currency at a downtown coffee shop.[69][70][71] Chinese internet giant Baidu had allowed clients of website security services to pay with bitcoins.[72]
In November 2013, the University of Nicosia announced that it would be accepting bitcoin as payment for tuition fees, with the university's chief financial officer calling it the "gold of tomorrow".[73] During November 2013, the China-based bitcoin exchange BTC China overtook the Japan-based Mt. Gox and the Europe-based Bitstamp to become the largest bitcoin trading exchange by trade volume.[74]
In December 2013, Overstock.com[75] announced plans to accept bitcoin in the second half of 2014. On 5 December 2013, the People's Bank of China prohibited Chinese financial institutions from using bitcoins.[76] After the announcement, the value of bitcoins dropped,[77] and Baidu no longer accepted bitcoins for certain services.[78] Buying real-world goods with any virtual currency has been illegal in China since at least 2009.[79]
2014
In January 2014, Zynga[80] announced it was testing bitcoin for purchasing in-game assets in seven of its games. That same month, The D Las Vegas Casino Hotel and Golden Gate Hotel & Casino properties in downtown Las Vegas announced they would also begin accepting bitcoin, according to an article by USA Today. The article also stated the currency would be accepted in five locations, including the front desk and certain restaurants.[81] The network rate exceeded 10 petahash/sec.[82] TigerDirect[83] and Overstock.com[84] started accepting bitcoin.
In early February 2014, one of the largest bitcoin exchanges, Mt. Gox,[85] suspended withdrawals citing technical issues.[86] By the end of the month, Mt. Gox had filed for bankruptcy protection in Japan amid reports that 744,000 bitcoins had been stolen.[87] Months before the filing, the popularity of Mt. Gox had waned as users experienced difficulties withdrawing funds.[88]
In June 2014 the network exceeded 100 petahash/sec.[89] On 18 June 2014, it was announced that bitcoin payment service providerBitPay would become the new sponsor of St. Petersburg Bowl under a two-year deal, renamed the Bitcoin St. Petersburg Bowl. Bitcoin was to be accepted for ticket and concession sales at the game as part of the sponsorship, and the sponsorship itself was also paid for using bitcoin.[90]
In July 2014 Newegg and Dell[91] started accepting bitcoin.
In September 2014 TeraExchange, LLC, received approval from the U.S.Commodity Futures Trading Commission "CFTC" to begin listing an over-the-counter swap product based on the price of a bitcoin. The CFTC swap product approval marks the first time a U.S. regulatory agency approved a bitcoin financial product.[92]
In December 2014 Microsoft began to accept bitcoin to buy Xbox games and Windows software.[93]
In 2014, several lighthearted songs celebrating bitcoin such as the Ode to Satoshi[94] have been released.[95]
A documentary film, The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin, was released in 2014, featuring interviews with bitcoin users, such as a computer programmer and a drug dealer.[96]

Two weeks later, he issued a statement to Newsweek, stating he "did not create, invent or otherwise work on Bitcoin."
Dorian Nakamoto's claim was corroborated by the actual Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto a day later, with Satoshi's username mysteriously surfacing in an online forum to post: "I am not Dorian Nakamoto."
The Craig Wright controversy

Australian entrepreneur Craig WrightScreenshot Via BBC
In 2016, Australian entrepreneur Craig Wright claimed to be the creator of Bitcoin and provided disputed code as proof. Bitcoin developer Gavin Andresen further corroborated Wright's gesture, saying he was "98 percent certain" that Wright was the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto.
But others were quick to disagree, and Wright's claim drew fierce skepticism from the cryptocurrency community online as well as alleged interest from the FBI. Amid the sudden influx of scrutiny, Wright deleted his post and issued a cryptic apology. "I'm sorry," he wrote, "I believed that I could put the years of anonymity and hiding behind me. But, as the events of this week unfolded and I prepared to publish the proof of access to the earliest keys, I broke. I do not have the courage."
Nick Szabo has been repeatedly identified as the creator of Bitcoin, a claim he denies.

The mysterious Nick Szabo Business Insider/Rob Price
In the course of determining the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, there's one person who has been thumbed again and again: hyper-secretive cryptocurrency expert Nick Szabo, who was not only fundamental to the development of Bitcoin, but also created his own cryptocurrency called "bit gold" in the late '90s.
In 2014, a team of linguistic researchers studied Nakamoto's writings alongside those of thirteen potential bitcoin creators. The results, they said, were indisputable.
"The number of linguistic similarities between Szabo's writing and the Bitcoin whitepaper is uncanny," the researchers reported, "none of the other possible authors were anywhere near as good of a match."
A story in the New York Times pegged Szabo as Bitcoin's creator, as well. Szabo, a staunch libertarian who has spoken publicly about the history of Bitcoin and blockchain technology, has been involved in cryptocurrency since its earliest beginnings.
Szabo firmly denied these claims, both in The New York times story and in a tweet: "Not Satoshi, but thank you."
Here's how the real "Satoshi Nakamoto" could prove his identity:

Flickr/Rachel Johnson
He could use his PGP key
A PGP key is a unique encryption program associated with a given user's name — similar to an online signature. Nakamoto could attach his to a post or a message indicating his identity.
He could move his bitcoin
Nakamoto has amassed a fortune in bitcoin: He's thought to possess over one million coins, which today would be valued in excess of a billion dollars.
Theoretically, Nakamoto could move those coins to a different address.
Dorian Nakamoto, Nick Szabo, and Craig Wright aren't the only ones who been pinned as the inventor of Bitcoin.

Elon Musk has recently denied claims that he is the creator of Bitcoin. REUTERS/Stephen Lam
There's a laundry list of people who have been pegged with this claim, but so far, they've all been struck down. Just this week, Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk denied being Bitcoin's creator.
The Wikipedia entry on Satoshi Nakamoto names at least 13 potential candidates as being responsible for the creation of Bitcoin.
It's been nearly 10 years since Bitcoin's beginnings, and we're still not any closer to confirming who invented it.
Why would the inventor of the world's most important cryptocurrency choose to remain anonymous?

Bernard von NotHaus, the creator of the Liberty Dollar YouTube
As it turns out, experimenting in new forms of currency is not without its consequences.
In 1998, Hawaiian resident Bernard von NotHaus dabbled in a fledgling form of currency called "Liberty Dollars" to disastrous results: He was charged with violating federal law and sentenced to six months of house arrest, along with a three-year probation.
In 2007, one of the first digital currencies, E-Gold, was shut down amid contentious circumstances by the government on grounds of money laundering.
If the inventor of Bitcoin wants to remain anonymous, it's for good reason: by maintaining anonymity, they've avoided adverse legal consequences, making their anonymity at least partially responsible for the currency's success.
Besides, one of the founding principals of Bitcoin is that it's a decentralized currency, untethered to conspicuous institutions or individuals. In his original proposition on Bitcoin, Nakamoto wrote, "What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party."
Why would someone go to all the trouble of creating a decentralized currency without sticking around to receive any of the credit?

Bill Hinton/Getty Images
Much of the mystery surrounding Nakamoto involves his motivations. Why would someone go to the trouble of creating a detailed and brilliant decentralized currency, only to later completely disappear from the public view?
A closer look at one of Nakamoto's original postings on the proposal of Bitcoin sheds some light on his possible motivations.
In February 2009, Nakamoto wrote, "The root problem with conventional currency 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. Banks must be trusted to hold our money and transfer it electronically, but they lend it out in waves of credit bubbles with barely a fraction in reserve. We have to trust them with our privacy, trust them not to let identity thieves drain our accounts."
In Bitcoin forums, it's been speculated that Nakamoto might be "a libertarian and hates the corrupt rich people and politicians." Other Bitcoin enthusiasts suggest the timing of Bitcoin's emergence is a clear indication of its raison d'être: The currency, which was created in the years following the housing bubble burst in 2007, might have been invented as means of disrupting the corrupted banking system.

2015
In January 2015 Coinbase raised 75 million USD as part of a Series C funding round, smashing the previous record for a bitcoin company.[97] Less than one year after the collapse of Mt. Gox, United Kingdom-based exchange Bitstamp announced that their exchange would be taken offline while they investigate a hack which resulted in about 19,000 bitcoins (equivalent to roughly US$5 million at that time) being stolen from their hot wallet.[98] The exchange remained offline for several days amid speculation that customers had lost their funds. Bitstamp resumed trading on 9 January after increasing security measures and assuring customers that their account balances would not be impacted.[99]
In March 2015 21 Inc announced it had raised 116 million USD in venture funding, the largest amount for any digital currency-related companies.[100]
As of August 2015 it was estimated that 160,000 merchants accept bitcoin payments.[101] Barclays announced that they would become the first UK high street bank to start accepting bitcoin, with a plan to facilitate users to make charitable donations using the cryptocurrency outside their systems.[102] They partnered in April 2016 with mobile payment startup Circle Internet Financial.[103]
In October 2015, a proposal was submitted to the Unicode Consortium to add a codepoint for the bitcoin symbol.[104]
2016
In January 2016, the network rate exceeded 1 exahash/sec.[105]
In March 2016, the Cabinet of Japan recognized virtual currencies like bitcoin as having a function similar to real money.[106] Bidorbuy, the largest South African online marketplace, launched bitcoin payments for both buyers and sellers.[107]
In April 2016, Steam started accepting bitcoin as payment for video games and other online media.[108]
In July 2016, researchers published a paper showing that by November 2013 bitcoin commerce was no longer driven by "sin" activities but instead by legitimate enterprises.[109] Uber switched to bitcoin in Argentina after the government blocked credit card companies from dealing with Uber.[110]
In August 2016, a major bitcoin exchange, Bitfinex, was hacked and nearly 120,000 BTC (around $60m) was stolen.[111]
In September 2016, the number of bitcoin ATMs had doubled over the last 18 months and reached 771 ATMs worldwide.[112]
In November 2016, the Swiss Railway operator SBB (CFF) upgraded all their automated ticket machines so that bitcoin could be bought from them using the scanner on the ticket machine to scan the bitcoin address on a phone app.[113]
Bitcoin generates more academic interest year after year; the number of Google Scholar articles published mentioning bitcoin grew from 83 in 2009, to 424 in 2012, and 3580 in 2016. Also, the academic Ledger (journal) published its first issue. It is edited by Peter Rizun.
2017
The number of businesses accepting bitcoin continues to increase. In January 2017, NHK reported the number of online stores accepting bitcoin in Japan had increased 4.6 times over the past year.[114] BitPay CEO Stephen Pair declared the company's transaction rate grew 3× from January 2016 to February 2017, and explained usage of bitcoin is growing in B2B supply chain payments.[115]
Bitcoin gains more legitimacy among lawmakers and legacy financial companies. For example, Japan passed a law to accept bitcoin as a legal payment method,[116] and Russia has announced that it will legalize the use of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.[117] And Norway’s largest online bank, Skandiabanken, integrates bitcoin accounts.[118]
In March 2017, the number of GitHub projects related to bitcoin passed 10,000.[119]
Exchange trading volumes continue to increase. For the 6-month period ending March 2017, Mexican exchange Bitso saw trading volume increase 1500%.[120] Between January and May 2017 Poloniex saw an increase of more than 600% active traders online and regularly processed 640% more transactions.[121]
In June 2017, the bitcoin symbol was encoded in Unicode version 10.0 at position U+20BF (₿) in the Currency Symbols block.[122]
On 1 August 2017 bitcoin split into two derivative digital currencies, the 1MB blocksize legacy chain bitcoin (BTC) and the 8MB blocksize hard fork upgrade Bitcoin Cash (BCH). The split has been called the Bitcoin Cash hard fork.[123]
On 6 December 2017 the software marketplace Steam announced that it would no longer accept bitcoin as payment for its products, citing slow transactions speeds, price volatility, and high fees for transactions.[124][125]
2018
On 24 January 2018, the online payment firm Stripe announced that it would phase out its support for bitcoin payments by late April 2018, citing declining demand, rising fees and longer transaction times as the reasons.[126] In 22 January 2018, South Korea brought in a regulation that requires all the bitcoin traders to reveal their identity, thus putting a ban on anonymous trading of bitcoins.[127]
Prices and value history

The price of a bitcoin reached US$1,139.9 on 4 January 2017. (semi logarithmic plot)
Among the factors which may have contributed to this rise were the European sovereign-debt crisis—particularly the 2012–2013 Cypriot financial crisis—statements by FinCEN improving the currency's legal standing and rising media and Internet interest.[128][129][130][131]
Until 2013, almost all market with bitcoins were in United States dollars (US $).[132][133][134]
As the market valuation of the total stock of bitcoins approached US$1 billion, some commentators called bitcoin prices a bubble.[135][136][137] In early April 2013, the price per bitcoin dropped from $266 to around $50 and then rose to around $100. Over two weeks starting late June 2013 the price dropped steadily to $70. The price began to recover, peaking once again on 1 October at $140. On 2 October, The Silk Road was seized by the FBI. This seizure caused a flash crash to $110. The price quickly rebounded, returning to $200 several weeks later.[138] The latest run went from $200 on 3 November to $900 on 18 November.[139] Bitcoin passed US$1,000 on 28 November 2013 at Mt. Gox.
Prices fell to around $400 in April 2014, before rallying in the middle of the year. They then declined to not much more than $200 in early 2015.[140]

TObEONIe......FNUT C