Bitcoin: The virtual currency built on math, hope and hype
The ascent this year of Bitcoin, a virtual currency forged through hard-core mathematics and buoyed by promises of financial liberation from banks, has been nothing short of mesmerizing.
It is being increasingly embraced as a viable means of exchange and a valuable investment, free from meddling by central banks and what some view as untrustworthy financial systems.
A pseudonymous programmer calling himself Satoshi Nakamoto developed the Bitcoin system, releasing a white paper in 2008. The network, launched in early 2009, uses peer-to-peer software to transfer bitcoins. A purely digital currency, a bitcoin is essentially a secret number that is transferred from one party to another using public key cryptography. "Miners," or people running high-end computers that verify the transactions, are awarded newly minted bitcoins for their efforts.
