Bitcoin may be the hype of the century, considered one of the most important and disruptive invention after the internet.
While more people are using the cryptocurrency, the market remains unstable. And this time, the price of a single Bitcoin is at $8,596, which is a respectable 2.77% increase in 24 hours, the highest closing price in three days, but still 57% below Bitcoin’s all-time high of $20,089.
But nevertheless, Bitcoin market capitalization ended the day at $156,322,174,637.
What this means, the cryptocurrency controls a healthy 66% of the total cryptocurrency market.
At this time, Bitcoin's $156 billion market capitalization is worth similar to the sportswear and apparel company Nike, which according to the stock market, was priced at $158.9 billion as of January 24, 2020.
Bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency which has no central bank or single administrator to govern it, as users can send other user Bitcoins using peer-to-peer Bitcoin network without the need for intermediaries.
Every transaction is verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a public distributed ledger called a blockchain.
Bitcoin was invented in 2008 by Satoshi Nakamoto, an unknown person or group of people. The project began Nakamoto implemented Bitcoin as open source code and released it in January 2009.
While Bitcoin and its underlying blockchain have a lot of uses, Bitcoin has been criticized for its use in illegal transactions, its high electricity consumption, and thefts from exchanges.
And as volatile the cryptocurrency can be, Bitcoin was priced at at $998 in 2017 and rose to $13,412.44 on 1 January 2018, after reaching its all-time high on 17 December 2017.
