Bitcoin Price, Charts, Analytics & Metrics

Reference page for Bitcoin price and capitalization, with detailed charts, market analytics and social metrics.

Bitcoin in a nutshell:

Bitcoin utilizes peer-to-peer technology for operations with no central authority or banks. Transaction management and the issuing of bitcoins is carried out collectively by the network.  Although other cryptocurrencies have existed before Bitcoin, Bitcoin is the first decentralized cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin provides the means for direct payments between individuals without an intermediary, in contrast with the existing system where every payment is processed by an existing monetary authority such as a bank. Taking out of the picture a centralized authority creates one of the currency’s defining features: Decentralized currency transactions.

With the most extensive variety of markets and the most prominent value and volume - having reached a peak of 81 billion USD - Bitcoin is considered the father of all cryptocurrencies. It is also the most traded cryptocurrency. Bitcoin is considered nowadays as one of the leading entry points for all the other cryptocurrencies. The price is viewed by traditional traders quite volatile, and it can go up or down by 5%-10% in a single day.

Bitcoin algorithm is SHA-256 and its based on Proof of work. There is a fixed amount of coins to be generated by mining at 21,000,000 total minable coins. The block generation time is currently at 10 minutes.