Thursday, May 28, 2026 F&G 22 · Extreme Fear
BTC $72,872 -3.65% ETH $1,975 -4.81% USDT $0.998246 -0.03% BNB $633.77 -2.86% XRP $1.28 -3.57% USDC $0.999530 -0.01% SOL $80.59 -3.80% TRX $0.364107 -2.44% FIGR_HELOC $1.03 +0.65% DOGE $0.097436 -4.00% HYPE $57.08 -7.58% USDS $0.999418 -0.02% LEO $10.06 +0.09% RAIN $0.014248 +23.10% ZEC $526.99 -7.68% ADA $0.229414 -4.25% XMR $380.46 -1.18% BCH $324.87 -5.49% LINK $8.82 -6.36% WBT $53.54 -3.82% BTC $72,872 -3.65% ETH $1,975 -4.81% USDT $0.998246 -0.03% BNB $633.77 -2.86% XRP $1.28 -3.57% USDC $0.999530 -0.01% SOL $80.59 -3.80% TRX $0.364107 -2.44% FIGR_HELOC $1.03 +0.65% DOGE $0.097436 -4.00% HYPE $57.08 -7.58% USDS $0.999418 -0.02% LEO $10.06 +0.09% RAIN $0.014248 +23.10% ZEC $526.99 -7.68% ADA $0.229414 -4.25% XMR $380.46 -1.18% BCH $324.87 -5.49% LINK $8.82 -6.36% WBT $53.54 -3.82%
TheWeal

Learn

What is Bitcoin? A 5-minute primer

Last updated

Bitcoin is the original cryptocurrency. It launched in 2009 with a 9-page whitepaper from a pseudonymous author named Satoshi Nakamoto. The protocol lets people send digital money to anyone, anywhere, without a bank or government intermediary. It is the largest cryptocurrency by market cap and the asset most institutional allocators use as their primary crypto exposure.

What problem does it solve?

Before Bitcoin, sending money internationally meant going through banks. Banks charge fees, take days, can refuse transactions, and operate only during business hours. Bitcoin operates 24/7, settles in roughly an hour, and works the same whether you are sending $10 or $10 million. The trade-off is that Bitcoin has no customer service — if you send funds to the wrong address, no one can reverse the transaction.

How does it work?

Bitcoin runs on a public ledger called a blockchain. Every transaction is broadcast to a network of computers (nodes), which collectively validate it. Specialised computers (miners) compete to bundle valid transactions into “blocks” by solving computational puzzles. The winning miner adds the block to the chain and is rewarded with newly-minted bitcoin plus transaction fees.

The puzzle-solving (proof-of-work) is what makes Bitcoin secure: to rewrite history, an attacker would need to outspend the rest of the network in compute, which is currently impractically expensive.

The 21 million cap

Bitcoin’s supply is capped at 21 million BTC. As of 2026, roughly 19.7 million have been mined. Issuance halves every four years (the “halving”). The 2024 halving cut the per-block reward from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC. By around 2140, the last BTC will be mined and miners will be compensated entirely from transaction fees.

How do you actually use it?

  1. Get a wallet (software like Phantom or MetaMask, or hardware like Ledger or Trezor).
  2. Buy BTC on an exchange (Coinbase, Kraken, Binance) and withdraw to your wallet.
  3. Send BTC by entering a recipient’s address.
  4. Verify the transaction on a block explorer like mempool.space.

What are the risks?

  • Price volatility — BTC can move 10–20% in a day; multi-month drawdowns of 50%+ are normal.
  • Lost keys — if you lose your private key or seed phrase, your BTC is permanently inaccessible.
  • Exchange failures — exchanges (Mt. Gox, FTX, Celsius) can fail with customer assets at risk. Self-custody mitigates this.
  • Regulatory action — government action can affect legality and accessibility in specific jurisdictions.

Is it a good investment?

We do not give investment advice. Bitcoin has been the best-performing major asset of the past decade. It has also experienced multi-year drawdowns of 70–90%. Both are true. See current price + prediction. Read our disclaimer.

Where to go next