What is Bitcoin?What is Bitcoin?

Are your colleagues, friends or the news talking about bitcoin more and more, and do you wonder what it actually is? In plain language: Bitcoin (BTC) is digital money that works without a bank. You can send, receive and store it, just like ordinary money, but there is no central party behind it that can decide to print more or freeze your account.

Bitcoin was conceived in 2008 by Satoshi Nakamoto (a pseudonym; to this day no one knows who it really is) and went live in January 2009. It was the first true cryptocurrency. Bitcoin has now existed for more than 17 years and is regarded as the standard for digitally scarce assets.

Unlike euros or dollars, there is a hard maximum: there will only ever be 21 million bitcoins. That number is fixed in the code and cannot be increased without a majority of the network agreeing to it.

Bitcoin runs on two types of computers in the network:

• Nodes, thousands of computers worldwide that keep a complete copy of the Bitcoin ledger (the blockchain). They check every transaction and make sure no one can cheat.
• Miners, specialised computers that bundle new transactions into a block and add that block to the blockchain. For this work they receive a reward in new bitcoins.

Every ~10 minutes a new block is added. A transaction becomes immutable this way: once it is in the blockchain, no one can reverse it. That is why Bitcoin is called a "trustless" system, you don't have to trust anyone, you trust mathematics.

Because thousands of computers keep track of which transactions have taken place at the same time, there is no single point of failure. One country cannot shut Bitcoin down by hacking a single server.

Bitcoin is by far the best-known and most valued cryptocurrency. It is often compared to gold: scarce, without an issuer, suitable as a long-term store of value. Ethereum is more of a platform for applications, and Ripple focuses on banks and payments.

There are three ways to get hold of Bitcoin:

1. Buy Bitcoin.

By far the most common method. At a Dutch provider like BTC Direct you can buy Bitcoin from 30 euros via iDEAL, credit card or bank transfer, without any technical knowledge.

2. Receive Bitcoin as payment.

Do you work freelance or as an entrepreneur? Then you can ask clients to pay in Bitcoin. More and more companies (such as BTC Direct itself) also offer part of their salary in Bitcoin.

3. Mine Bitcoin.

With powerful hardware you help the network and receive new Bitcoin as a reward. In 2026 mining is only profitable with industrial ASIC machines and cheap electricity, no longer with your laptop.

For most people, buying through a registered platform is the simplest and safest route. After that you store your Bitcoin in your own wallet (mobile, software or hardware).