Short answers, pulled from the story.
Bitcoin was invented by an unknown person or group using the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. The bitcoin white paper was published on the 31st of October 2008, and the bitcoin network went live on the 3rd of January 2009 when Nakamoto mined the genesis block.
The first known commercial bitcoin transaction took place on the 22nd of May 2010, when programmer Laszlo Hanyecz paid 10,000 bitcoins for two Papa John's pizzas. This date is now commemorated annually as Bitcoin Pizza Day.
The total supply of bitcoin is capped at 21 million coins, a limit built into the protocol. This maximum is expected to be reached around the year 2140, after which miners will earn only from transaction fees rather than newly created bitcoin.
Bitcoin became legal tender in El Salvador in September 2021, alongside the US dollar. A January 2025 reform removed the obligation for businesses and the government to accept it, and El Salvador revoked its legal-tender status to comply with conditions set by the International Monetary Fund.
Bitcoin mining is the process by which new transactions are grouped into blocks and added to the blockchain. Miners must solve a computationally intensive puzzle to add each block, requiring specialized hardware that consumes large amounts of electricity. A Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance study found bitcoin's greenhouse gas emissions comparable to Slovakia's national output.
Bitcoin's price crossed $100,000 for the first time in December 2024, following US president-elect Donald Trump's pledge to make the US the "crypto capital of the planet" and to stockpile bitcoin. BlackRock recommended that same month that investors allocate up to 2% of their portfolios to bitcoin.