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Digital assets and currencies

Understand assets, networks and trading mechanics with sources you can check.

Assets

Bitcoin

Bitcoin (abbreviation: BTC; sign: ₿) is the first decentralized cryptocurrency. Based on a free-market ideology, bitcoin was invented in 2008 when an unknown person published a white paper under the pseudonym of Satoshi Nakamoto. Use of bitcoin as a currency began in 2009, with the release of its open-source implementation. From 2021 to 2025, El Salvador adopted it as legal tender curren

Fiat currencies

Bitcoin Satoshi Vision

Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV) is a cryptocurrency that is a hard fork of Bitcoin Cash. Bitcoin Satoshi Vision was created in November 2018 by a group of individuals led by Craig Steven Wright, who has claimed since 2015 to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of the original bitcoin.

Payments & settlement

BitPay

BitPay is a cryptocurrency payment service provider headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. It was founded in May 2011 by Tony Gallippi and Stephen Pair. BitPay provides crypto payment processing services for merchants and a cryptocurrency wallet available on mobile and desktop.

Assets

Blockchain

A blockchain is a distributed ledger with growing lists of records (blocks) that are securely linked together via cryptographic hashes. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a timestamp, and transaction data (generally represented as a Merkle tree, where data nodes are represented by leaves). Since each block contains information about the previous block, they e

Trading basics

Cryptocurrency ATM

A cryptocurrency ATM (automated teller machine) or Bitcoin ATM is a kiosk that allows a person to purchase Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies by using cash or debit card. Some Bitcoin ATMs offer bidirectional functionality, enabling both the purchase of Bitcoin and the sale of Bitcoin for cash. In some cases, Bitcoin ATM providers require users to have an existing account to transact on

Fiat currencies

Digital gold currency

Digital gold currency (DGC) is a form of digital currency based on mass units of gold. The typical unit of account for such currency is linked to grams or troy ounces of gold, although other units such as the gold dinar are sometimes used. DGCs are backed by gold through unallocated or allocated gold storage. A digital gold currency could be a kind of representative money if it is exchan

Fiat currencies

Economics of bitcoin

Bitcoin was designed by its pseudonymous inventor, Satoshi Nakamoto, to work as a currency, but its status as a currency is disputed. Economists define money as a store of value, a medium of exchange and a unit of account, and agree that bitcoin does not currently meet all these criteria.

Finance

Luke Dashjr

Luke Dashjr is an American software developer known for his long-standing role in the development of Bitcoin Core and for co-founding the Bitcoin mining pool Ocean.

Networks

Markets in Crypto-Assets

Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA or MiCAR) is a regulation in European Union (EU) law that establishes a regulatory framework for crypto-assets in the EU, including cryptocurrencies, security tokens and stablecoins. It was adopted by the EU Parliament on 20 April 2023 and has applied in full since December 2024.

Assets

Mining pool

In the context of cryptocurrency mining, a mining pool is the pooling of resources by miners, who share their processing power over a network, to split the reward equally, according to the amount of work they contributed to the probability of finding a block. A "share" is awarded to members of the mining pool who present a valid partial proof-of-work. Mining in pools began when the diffi

Networks

OpenTimestamps

OpenTimestamps (OTS) is an open-source project that aims to provide a standard format for blockchain timestamping.

Fiat currencies

Ouroboros (protocol)

Ouroboros is a family of proof-of-stake consensus protocols used in the Cardano and Polkadot blockchains. It can run both permissionless and permissioned blockchains.

Assets

Proof of work

Proof of work (also written as proof-of-work, and abbreviated PoW) is a form of cryptographic proof in which one party (the prover) proves to others (the verifiers) that a certain amount of a specific computational effort has been expended. Verifiers can subsequently confirm this expenditure with minimal effort on their part. The concept was first proposed by Moni Naor and Cynthia Dwork

Assets

Royal Mint Gold

Royal Mint Gold was a digital gold currency and a cryptocurrency backed by gold reserves in the UK Royal Mint. The Royal Mint launched a digitized token called RMG, representing one gram of physical gold per token, in 2016. It began testing blockchain transactions in April 2017. The first test transaction was in August 2017. The rollout was originally scheduled to occur by the end of 20