What is Bitcoin?

Bitcoin is the world's first decentralized digital currency. It was introduced in 2008 by a person or group using the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, and the network went live on January 3, 2009. To this day, nobody knows who Satoshi Nakamoto is.

The problem Bitcoin was designed to solve

Before Bitcoin, sending money digitally required a trusted third party: a bank, PayPal, or Western Union, to verify that you actually had the funds you were sending and hadn't already spent them. This is called the "double-spend problem."

Bitcoin solved it without a middleman by creating a public ledger (the blockchain) that anyone in the world can read and verify. Every transaction is recorded, every record is permanent, and no single person or institution controls it.

What makes Bitcoin different from other money

No central issuer. The US dollar is issued by the Federal Reserve. The euro by the European Central Bank. Bitcoin is issued by a set of rules written into open-source software. No government, no company, and no individual can inflate the supply, freeze an account, or reverse a transaction.

Fixed supply. There will never be more than 21 million Bitcoin. This is hard-coded into the protocol. For comparison, the US money supply has more than doubled since 2020.

Permissionless. Anyone with internet access can send and receive Bitcoin without opening an account, passing an identity check, or getting anyone's approval.

Borderless. A Bitcoin transaction between a wallet in Tokyo and a wallet in Lagos is identical to one between two wallets in the same building.

Is Bitcoin "real" money?

Bitcoin meets the three classical definitions of money: it's a store of value (people hold it to preserve purchasing power over time), a medium of exchange (people use it to transact), and increasingly a unit of account (some goods and services are priced in Bitcoin or satoshis).

Whether you think of it as digital gold, a savings technology, or a new monetary system, the underlying infrastructure is real and has been operating continuously for over 15 years without a single hour of downtime.

With Astra, you don't need to fully understand Bitcoin before you start saving in it. Many people contribute first and learn as they go, at their own pace.