Bitcoin: Known as digital cash, cryptocurrency or internet money.

Bitcoin is a revolution that is changing the way everyone sees and uses money.

Bitcoin Introduction

Bitcoin is a currency born into the digital age. When using Bitcoin for the first time people should get an idea of how it works. Digital money is different than the traditional finance world is used to. It offers three core values in which many currencies cannot attain: Decentralization, Open Source, and Peer-to-Peer networking. It is important to get an idea of how to use Bitcoin before investing in it or starting wallet. At Bitcoin.com we are very passionate about the protocol and want to help you learn along the way. There is a lot to learn, but it is not beyond your grasp. Bitcoin is a truly beautiful innovation, and it has the capacity to change the world.

What is bitcoin?

Bitcoin is the so-called internet money.
BTC stands for Bitcoin Currency.

Bitcoin‘s inventor, Satoshi Nakamoto, described Bitcoin as “A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” in the original 2009 Bitcoin whitepaper – the document which created the roadmap for Bitcoin. To date, this is still the most simple and accurate description.

Bitcoin is different than any currency you’ve used before, so it's very important to understand some key points. Unlike government issued money that can be inflated at will, the supply of Bitcoin is mathematically limited to twenty one million bitcoins and that can never be changed. 

Bitcoin is a consensus network that enables a new payment system and a completely digital money. It is the first decentralized peer-to-peer payment network that is powered by its users with no central authority or middlemen. From a user perspective, Bitcoin is perhaps best described as ‘cash for the Internet’, but Bitcoin can also be seen as the most prominent triple entry bookkeeping system in existence.

It is also known as digital cash, cryptocurrency, an international payment network, the internet of money – but whatever you call it, Bitcoin is a revolution that is changing the way everyone sees and uses money.

The beauty of Bitcoin is that it requires no central servers or third-party clearing houses to settle transactions – all payments are peer-to-peer (P2P) and are settled in about 10 minutes – unlike credit card payments, which can take weeks or months before they’re finally settled.

All Bitcoin transactions are recorded permanently on a distributed ledger called the “blockchain” – this ledger is shared between all full Bitcoin “miners” and “nodes” around the world, and is publicly-viewable. These miners and nodes verify transactions and keep the network secure. For the electricity they use to do this, miners are rewarded with new bitcoins with each 10-minute block (the reward is currently 12.5 BTC per block).

The Bitcoin protocol is also hard-limited to 21 million bitcoins, meaning that no more than that can ever be created. This means that no central bank, individual or government can come along and simply ‘print’ more bitcoins when it suits them. In this sense Bitcoin is a deflationary currency, and as such is likely to grow in value based on this property alone.

Bitcoin Price

Bitcoin is also determined by the laws of supply and demand. Because the supply is limited to 21 million bitcoins, as more people use Bitcoin the increased demand, combined with the fixed supply, will force the price to go up. Because the number of people using Bitcoin in the world is still relatively small, the price of Bitcoin in terms of traditional currency can fluctuate significantly on a daily basis, but will continue to increase as more people start to use it. For example, in early 2011 one Bitcoin was worth less than one USD, but in 2015 one Bitcoin is worth hundreds of USD. In the future, if Bitcoin becomes truly popular, each single Bitcoin will have to be worth at least hundreds of thousands of dollars in order to accommodate this additional demand.

Blockchain - Bitcoin's world wide ledger that records Bitcoin transactions that are seen by the entire network within a few seconds.

Tips 1: It’s also a good idea not to use an exchange as a wallet. Move your Bitcoin to your personal wallet so that you have control over your funds at all times.

Tips 2: If you decide you want to own a lot of Bitcoin it would be a good idea to divide them among several different wallets. As they saying goes, don’t put all your 

Reminder: Most wallets, however, allow the user to be in charge of their own private keys. This means that no one in the entire world can access your account without your permission. It also means that no one can help you if you forget your password or otherwise lose access to your private keys.

Who Developed Bitcoin?

The original Bitcoin code was designed by Satoshi Nakamoto under MIT open source credentials. In 2008 Nakamoto outlined the idea behind Bitcoin in his White Paper, which scientifically described how the cryptocurrency would function. Bitcoin is the first successful digital currency designed with trust in cryptography over central authorities. Satoshi left the Bitcoin code in the hands of developers and the community in 2010. Thus far hundreds of developers have added to the core code throughout the years.

Cryptography

 - Discipline or techniques employed in protecting integrity or secrecy of electronic messages by converting them into unreadable (cipher text) form. Only the use of a secret key can convert the cipher text back into human readable (clear text) form. Cryptography software and/or hardware devices use mathematical formulas (algorithms) to change text from one form to another. (http://www.businessdictionary.com)

Modern cryptography concerns itself with the following four objectives:

Confidentiality (the information cannot be understood by anyone for whom it was unintended)

2) Integrity (the information cannot be altered in storage or transit between sender and intended receiver without the alteration being detected)

3) Non-repudiation (the creator/sender of the information cannot deny at a later stage his or her intentions in the creation or transmission of the information)

4) Authentication (the sender and receiver can confirm each other?s identity and the origin/destination of the information). Procedures and protocols that meet some or all of the above criteria are known as cryptosystems. Cryptosystems are often thought to refer only to mathematical procedures and computer programs; however, they also include the regulation of human behavior, such as choosing hard-to-guess passwords, logging off unused systems, and not discussing sensitive procedures with outsiders.

Cryptography: A little History Background

The word is derived from the Greek kryptos, meaning hidden. The origin of cryptography is usually dated from about 2000 BC, with the Egyptian practice of hieroglyphics. These consisted of complex pictograms, the full meaning of which was only known to an elite few. The first known use of a modern cipher was by Julius Caesar (100 BC to 44 BC), who did not trust his messengers when communicating with his governors and officers. For this reason, he created a system in which each character in his messages was replaced by a character three positions ahead of it in the Roman alphabet.

In recent times, cryptography has turned into a battleground of some of the world's best mathematicians and computer scientists. The ability to securely store and transfer sensitive information has proved a critical factor in success in war and business.

Because governments do not wish certain entities in and out of their countries to have access to ways to receive and send hidden information that may be a threat to national interests, cryptography has been subject to various restrictions in many countries, ranging from limitations of the usage and export of software to the public dissemination of mathematical concepts that could be used to develop cryptosystems. However, the Internet has allowed the spread of powerful programs and, more importantly, the underlying techniques of cryptography, so that today many of the most advanced cryptosystems and ideas are now in the public domain. (source site: searchsoftwarequality.techtarget.com)

Main Source: 
https://www.bitcoin.com/