What is "bitcoin"

Bitcoin (symbol: ; Abrev ISO 4217: BTC or XBT) is a digital currency of the type cryptocurrency decentralized and also an alternative economic system (peer-to-peer Electronic cash system, point-to-point electronic money system), presented in 2008 on the mailing list The Cryptography Mailing by a programmer, or a group of pseudonyms Satoshi Nakamoto.

It is considered the world’s first decentralized digital currency, and responsible for the resurgence of the free banking system.

The bitcoin allows financial transactions without intermediaries, but verified by all network users (network nodes) Bitcoin, which are recorded in a distributed database, called blockchain (block chain).

In July 2015, Brazil broke its local transaction record in Bitcoins, accounting for 10,000 Bitcoins, equivalent to 9.3 million of real.

Units

The Bitcoin system account unit is the "bitcoin". The symbols used to represent bitcoin are BTC, XBT and ₿. Small amounts of bitcoin used as alternative units are: milibitcoin (mBTC), microbitcoin (µBTC) and Satoshi (named after the bitcoin creator).

• Satoshi, is the smallest amount of the system, representing 0.00000001 bitcoin, one hundredth of a millionth of bitcoin;

• milibitcoin, is equivalent to 0.001 bitcoin, worth one thousandth of bitcoin;

• microbitcoin, is equivalent to 0.000001 bitcoin, value of one millionth of bitcoin. It is also called a bit.

On October 7, 2014, the Bitcoin Foundation released a plan to enter bitcoin in the international currency standard ISO 4217, and mentioned BTC and XBT as the main candidates.

Source: Wikipedia

Complete information on the Bitcoin on Wikipedia.