Bitcoin

Bitcoin is a type of digital currency generated and held electronically. It is not printed like paper money. These are also used as electronic money used to purchase things, although, these are considered unregulated and decentralized, which means, no single institution controls its network. The items purchased using it does not require a central authority like a bank to sanctions the financial transaction between two parties. They are like conventional dollars, euros, yen or any other world’s currency which are traded digitally.

In 2011, the decentralized alternative digital money gained popularity and now hundreds of such currencies are traded globally. It becomes one of the most popular cryptocurrency in 2008 for the first time about two months after the crash of Lehman’s Brothers Holdings in 2008, which signified that banks lost trust as single authorized financial units.  Its value started from $1 and reached $20,000 in December 2017. In 2018-2018, it fluctuated in the range below $7000. Since it is an unregulated monetary unit there is no role of large banks in controlling its movement. It is traded on the internet where the traders' process transactions that are made with virtual currencies, making bitcoins their own payment network. 

These are based on the mathematics used in software programs that follows a formula to create it. This formula can be freely used by anyone that raises doubts about the use of such units for financial purposes.  These are not government-backed and are not controlled by a reliable authority. Each machine that produces and processes it makes up a section of the network and the machines all work together. 

The positive aspects of such currencies are that they store all the details of every transaction that has ever happened in the larger version of a general ledger, known as the blockchain. If you have a publicly used Bitcoin address then that allows for anyone to tell how many bitcoins you have stored at that address, although they just do not know that it is yours.