Bitcoin

Bitcoin is the first cryptocurrency, and the world's most valuable cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization.

Bitcoin was invented by an unknown person or group of people under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto and released as open-source software in 2009.

Bitcoin & Trezor

We created the Trezor Model One, the world's first hardware wallet, to help people store their bitcoin back in 2014.

Since then, we've added support for other cryptocurrencies, but we offer Bitcoin-only firmware on Trezor devices for those those that want to keep their devices purely compatible with Bitcoin.

The easiest way to use Bitcoin with your Trezor is via our Trezor Suite desktop application; you can also track your balances on the go with our mobile application Trezor Suite Lite.

Trezor Suite

Bitcoin is integrated with Trezor Suite, therefore it is possible to use it in the standard interface.

• Plug in your Trezor device.
• Download and install Trezor Suite; alternatively, you can use Trezor Suite for web.
• Navigate to the Accounts page, and select Bitcoin in the "My accounts" side menu.
• In each of your Bitcoin accounts, you can send, receive, view, sign & verify transactions.

Third-party wallet apps

It is also possible to use your Trezor with third-party wallets if you want to access features which aren't in Trezor Suite, such as creating a multisig wallet.

You can use your Trezor to manage your bitcoin with the following third-party wallet apps:

What is Bitcoin?

Bitcoin is an open, public payment network which has existed since 2009.

Anyone with a Bitcoin wallet can send or receive value directly. No bank, government, or corporation can stand in the way.

A node is any computer that runs the Bitcoin software, helping to maintain the network by enforcing its rules and validating transactions.

Special nodes called miners compete over processing transactions on the network. Roughly every 10 minutes, a miner bundles recent transactions into a new block and broadcasts the block to all nodes.

Each successful miner receives a block reward (newly mined bitcoin plus any transaction fees) bringing fresh coins into circulation.

What is Bitcoin used for?

Bitcoin has come a long way since someone famously bought two pizzas for 10,000 bitcoin in 2010 .

Now, its uses range from micro-payments to multi-billion-dollar trades and transfers. In recent years, Bitcoin was adopted by the financial services industry for a variety of purposes, and it has also been adopted as a treasury asset by some governments and corporations.

It is also used in everyday life to pay for goods in communities which have adopted Bitcoin.

Who controls Bitcoin?

Bitcoin is an open protocol. Anyone who uses Bitcoin participates in its shared governance.

It is not controlled by any single entity. There is no organization that operates Bitcoin.

Bitcoin's evolution relies on open-source developers, miners, nodes, and the broader economic majority.

No group can force changes on the others; upgrades take hold only when participants reach transparent, globally distributed consensus.

Because global consensus for changes is intentionally difficult to achieve, Bitcoin evolves slowly and conservatively.

Decentralization

Bitcoin's primary foundational principle is decentralization.

Most systems we use are centralized. They are controlled by one company or authority - for example, your bank or your favorite social media app.

Because a single entity is in control, access to your account or data can be revoked at any time.

In a decentralized system, no single person or company is in charge. Instead, many nodes work together power the network.

Independent nodes maintain the system and validate one another, so no single node can impose changes or gain control.

By distributing the network globally instead of relying on a few centralized data centers, Bitcoin becomes censorship resistant. Because Bitcoin is powered by independent nodes with varying incentives, the blockchain becomes a single source of truth for the full transaction history.

Bitcoin’s decentralized nature gives access to financial tools to those excluded from traditional banking. All you need to create a Bitcoin wallet is a device that can connect to the internet.

History

Before Bitcoin

In the 1980s, a small group of technologists had already begun experimenting with ways to protect messages and digital value from surveillance. Their early experiments with digital cash and private communications laid the groundwork for what would become the cypherpunk movement.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, they began exploring ways to create a digital form of money that didn’t rely on governments or banks. Among them was Wei Dai, who proposed b-money in 1998: a concept for “an anonymous, distributed electronic cash system.” Though never implemented, b-money introduced key ideas that would later influence Bitcoin.

Around the same time, Hashcash, developed by Adam Back in 1997, used a Proof-of-Work mechanism to combat email spam. This same mechanism became central to Bitcoin mining.

Then came Bit gold, designed by Nick Szabo. Like Bitcoin, it used cryptographic puzzles and timestamped records to secure a decentralized digital currency. Although Bit gold was never launched, it’s often called a direct precursor to Bitcoin.

Satoshi Nakamoto & the birth of Bitcoin

In 2008, an unknown figure or group using the name Satoshi Nakamoto joined the cypherpunks mailing list and shared a white paper titled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. By combining the innovations of b-money, Hashcash, and Bit gold, with a few critical improvements, Satoshi launched Bitcoin on January 3rd, 2009.

Other breakthroughs also contributed to Bitcoin’s architecture, including secure timestamping, Merkle trees for cryptographic proof, and public key cryptosystems. But Bitcoin was the first to bring them all together into a functioning, decentralized network.

Satoshi Nakamoto's last public interaction was in 2011. He then left development of the protocol to the community.

Technology

Transactions, Blocks & the Blockchain

The Bitcoin network allows anyone to send bitcoin from an address they control to another. Each transaction is grouped into a block - a collection of transactions assembled by miners. A new block is created roughly every 10 minutes.

A transaction is officially recorded once it’s included successfully mined block. Every miner and node verifies its validity using cryptography and the rules of the Bitcoin protocol. When the network reaches consensus, the block becomes part of the blockchain - the complete chain of all blocks ever mined, dating back to Bitcoin's creation in 2008.

Each confirmation makes a transaction more secure, which is why many Bitcoiners and businesses wait for multiple confirmations before considering a payment final. This process prevents double‑spending, the attempt to spend the same funds twice, which was a core motivation for Satoshi Nakamoto.

Every block contains a SHA‑256 cryptographic hash of the previous block, linking them into a secure, unbroken chain of records called the blockchain. Blocks are numbered in sequence which reflects their position in the chain. This is known as the block height.

A block can’t be changed because altering a past transaction would change its cryptographic hash, breaking the chain.

The blockchain forms a shared, tamper‑resistant history of all bitcoin transactions since the network began. Copies of this chain are stored on thousands of computers worldwide, making it easy to verify accuracy and extremely difficult to censor. By distributing trust across a global network, Bitcoin remains secure without relying on any central authority.

Proof of Work & Mining

Proof of Work is the process that secures the Bitcoin network and issues new bitcoin into circulation to miners - participants who use computing power to process transactions add blocks to the blockchain.

It is a computationally intensive process involving repeated trial-and-error calculations to find a solution that meets specific criteria. While the solution is difficult to produce, each result can be verified almost instantly by anyone.

Mining is the process of using computer power to secure the Bitcoin network by validating and recording transactions, and earning bitcoin as a reward through Proof of Work.

As an incentive, miners compete to solve a complex Proof of Work calculation, and approximately every 10 minutes, the first to succeed is rewarded with newly created bitcoin and the transaction fees from all the transactions in that block, and they are able to add that block to the blockchain.

As more miners join the network to compete, the network automatically adjusts the difficulty, making it increasingly harder to earn new bitcoin over time and keeping the approximate 10 minute block time consistent even if computational power increases significantly.

Supply

One of Bitcoin's most famous features is the total supply - capped to 21,000,000 bitcoin. However, not all 21,000,000 bitcoin have been mined yet.

New bitcoin enters circulation once a miner mines a block. The successful miner is rewarded with newly created bitcoin (called a block reward) and transaction fees.

The block reward decreases over time in a previously determined process called Bitcoin halving. Bitcoin automatically halves the block reward every 210,000 blocks (about once every four years) steadily reducing the rate at which new coins enter circulation.

When Bitcoin was first created, the block reward was 50 bitcoin. It is currently 3.125 bitcoin. It will steadily decrease until it gradually becomes one satoshi, and then zero, estimated in the year 2140, at which point miners will be compensated with transaction fees only, and all 21,000,000 bitcoin will have been mined.

UTXOs

UTXOs (Unspent Transaction Outputs) are a core component of Bitcoin. They are pieces of bitcoin controlled by a wallet until they are spent (sent to another address). Every Bitcoin transaction creates a one or more new UTXOs and can combine existing UTXOs from different addresses controlled by the same wallet.

HD wallets

Hierarchical Deterministic (HD) wallets use a single wallet backup to generate a nearly unlimited number of unique addresses. Instead of creating a separate wallet for each address, HD wallets use a tree-like structure to organize and recover all keys. This improves privacy, simplifies wallet recovery, and supports secure scaling of your accounts.