The possibility of a globally recognized virtual or digital currency seemed its closest ever in 2013 as Bitcoin, a cryptographically secured monetary unit (or crypto-currency) developed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, gained in popularity—and value—and began to make inroads into mainstream financial transactions. Speculators were blamed for some of the incredible volatility in the value of a Bitcoin, which ranged from $0.05 in July 2010 to $13 in early 2013 before spiking to $266 in April, dropping to about $60, and then soaring above $1,000 in late November. Meanwhile, some traditional vendors and online marketplaces began to accept Bitcoin as a legitimate form of electronic payment for goods and services.
The increasing use of virtual currency became more evident in October 2013 when the FBI announced that it had shut down the underground Web site Silk Road—an anonymous online marketplace used for illegal drug deals, money laundering, and other criminal activities—which accepted only Bitcoins as payment for all transactions. The U.S. government also seized millions of dollars worth of Bitcoins being held on the Silk Road computers. This triggered U.S. Senate hearings in November on the future of Bitcoin and other virtual currencies, which even the FBI acknowledged “offer legitimate financial services.”
On Nov. 1, 2008, an unidentified individual or group using the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto released, with little fanfare, what would become known as the Satoshi White Paper. This document, titled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System, detailed a protocol for a new kind of distributed money. It was a new variation on an old theme, following in the footsteps of DigiCash, e-gold, and other digital currencies.
At its core Bitcoin is decentralized “digital cash” that was designed as both a payment network and a unit of account native to the Internet. Bitcoin transactions, like those involving cash, are person-to-person deals requiring no bank or money transmitter to facilitate. This means that they are irreversible, are very fast, and have very low or no costs. Unlike the procedure in a cash transaction, however, an individual does not need to be standing next to a person to transfer Bitcoins. Users install free open-source “wallet” software on their computers or mobile devices, a function that allows them to send and receive Bitcoins to and from anyone else connected to the Internet.
For the past century or more, control and caretaking of money has been left to national or regional governments. Rather than being governed by groups of people, however, Bitcoin’s rules are codified in its cryptographically secured protocol. Anyone who dedicates specialized computer hardware with enough computational power (measured in “hashes” per second) to help implement these rules can do so and be rewarded for it. The monetary fundamentals, such as how much of the currency should be issued and on what schedule, were decided before the first Bitcoin even came into existence. Irrevocable instructions provide an accurate road map for Bitcoin through the year 2140. Because anyone can participate, the protocol includes a number of “self-adjusting mechanisms” to keep the system running as close to the ideal as possible.
The virtual transfer of Bitcoins relies on an open and transparent global ledger that keeps track of the creation and ownership of every Bitcoin ever produced. A copy of this ledger is stored on each participating computer, a safeguard that makes the system very resistant to disruptions or distortions even should such occurrences have an impact on a large proportion of total Bitcoin users. Verification of transfers is completely automated, and each installation of wallet software individually and independently verifies that all other transactions are following the rules by using hard to falsify but easy to verify public-key cryptography.
Public-key cryptography uses a digital “keypair” involving a private key and one or more public addresses. The public address can be thought of as a locked mailbox: anyone can use it to leave something for the owner of the box, but it requires a specific key (the private key) to access the contents left by others.
When a user creates a new wallet, a public/private keypair is automatically generated. To receive Bitcoins a person distributes an individual public address or creates a new one. An unlimited number of public addresses may be generated, each controlled by the same private key, and other users can transmit Bitcoins to the person who controls that key by using any one of those addresses. A user can then transmit control of Bitcoins from his or her wallet to someone else, as in a purchase, by using the private key to automatically sign a new transaction. The owner’s signature serves to confirm the address from which the Bitcoins will be sent, and every client on the network will eventually verify that the signature is valid. Each Bitcoin can itself be effortlessly divided to 0.00000001 of a Bitcoin (also known as a “Satoshi”), and since each fraction of a Bitcoin is interchangeable, Bitcoins can be “spent” in fractional amounts.
When a user makes a transaction, that person’s Bitcoin client broadcasts it to the rest of the network. Approximately every 10 minutes, all transactions are collected into a “block,” which is cryptographically easy to verify as correct (or not) but computationally difficult to create. Once a transaction has been contained within a block, each block that comes after it is built on top of it, which makes it exponentially more difficult to change with each additional block. A user would require 51% of the hash power to change a transaction that has been confirmed by six blocks. Because this is a continuous record, it is crucial that the entire chain of transactions is valid and follows the rules, since every transaction builds on the validity of the ones that were made previously, and each block created solidifies prior blocks.