Crypto basics · 10 min read

What is Bitcoin?

Bitcoin is the first cryptocurrency: digital money that works without a bank or a company in charge. Since January 2009, a worldwide network of computers has kept one shared record of who owns which bitcoin — and its rules allow no more than 21 million coins ever to exist.

Launched

3 January 2009

Created by

Satoshi Nakamoto, a pseudonym

Maximum supply

21 million BTC

New block

About every 10 minutes

How the network agrees

Proof of work

Smallest unit

1 satoshi = 0.00000001 BTC

The problem Bitcoin solves

Digital things are easy to copy. A photo you send by email is still on your computer afterwards. For money, that’s a problem: what stops someone from spending the same digital coin twice? This is called the double-spending problem.

Until 2009, the answer was always a middleman. When you pay by card or bank transfer, your bank keeps the ledger: it lowers your balance, raises the other person’s, and makes sure the same euro isn’t spent twice. You have to trust the bank, and the bank can block, delay or reverse payments.

Bitcoin solves double spending without a middleman. Instead of one bank keeping the ledger, thousands of computers keep identical copies of it and agree on every change using fixed, public rules.

The blockchain: one shared ledger

Bitcoin’s ledger is a blockchain. New transactions are collected into a block about every ten minutes, and every block contains a fingerprint — a hash — of the block before it. Together they form a chain that goes all the way back to the first block, mined on 3 January 2009.

Because each block points to the one before it, changing an old transaction would change that block’s fingerprint and break every link after it. To rewrite history, someone would have to redo the work for all the following blocks faster than the rest of the network. On a network the size of Bitcoin’s, that would cost an enormous amount of computing power and electricity.

How a payment works: an example

Say Anna wants to send 0.01 BTC to Ben. This is what happens:

1. Anna’s wallet creates the transaction. It says which of Anna’s coins are spent, Ben’s address, and the fee she offers.
2. The wallet signs it with Anna’s private key. The signature proves the owner approved the payment, without revealing the key itself.
3. The transaction is broadcast. Bitcoin nodes check the signature and that the coins haven’t been spent yet, then pass it on. It waits in a queue called the mempool.
4. A miner puts it in a block. Miners usually pick the transactions that pay the highest fee per byte first.
5. Confirmations add up. Once the block is added, Ben’s payment has one confirmation. Every new block on top adds another; many services treat three to six confirmations as final.

Coins work like banknotes

A Bitcoin wallet doesn’t hold one balance the way a bank account does. The network keeps track of separate pieces of bitcoin that haven’t been spent yet, called unspent transaction outputs, or UTXOs. Your balance is the sum of the pieces your keys can spend.

They work a lot like banknotes. If Anna’s only piece is worth 0.03 BTC, she can’t tear off 0.01. Her transaction spends the whole piece and creates new ones: 0.01 BTC for Ben, 0.0199 BTC back to an address of her own as change, and the 0.0001 BTC left over goes to the miner as the fee.

Mining and proof of work

Miners are the computers that add new blocks. To add one, a miner has to find a number that, combined with the block’s contents, produces a hash below a target set by the network. There’s no shortcut: the only way is to try one guess after another. A modern mining machine makes trillions of guesses per second, and the whole network makes far more.

The first miner to find a valid answer broadcasts the block. The other nodes check it in a fraction of a second, and the winner receives the block reward: newly created bitcoin plus the fees of every transaction in the block. Since April 2024, the new bitcoin per block is 3.125 BTC.

Every 2,016 blocks — about two weeks — the network adjusts the difficulty. If blocks came faster than every ten minutes, the target gets harder to hit; if they came slower, it gets easier. That’s how Bitcoin keeps a steady pace no matter how many miners join or leave.

Proof of work uses a lot of electricity, and that has been debated for years. Supporters say this cost is exactly what makes rewriting Bitcoin’s history so expensive; critics point to its energy use and its impact on the environment.

Nodes keep everyone honest

Miners don’t make the rules. Anyone can run a full node: free software that downloads every block and checks every rule — valid signatures, no coin spent twice, no more new bitcoin than allowed. A block that breaks a rule is rejected by the nodes, however much work went into it. Thousands of independent nodes around the world do this every day.

Only 21 million bitcoin

Bitcoin’s supply is fixed in its code. New coins only come into existence through the block reward, and that reward is cut in half every 210,000 blocks, roughly every four years. This is the halving. Because of it, the total number of bitcoin gets closer and closer to 21 million but never goes past it; the last tiny fraction is expected to be mined around the year 2140.

At the 2024 halving, about 19.69 million bitcoin had already been created — 93.75% of all the bitcoin there will ever be.

The Bitcoin halving, explained

You don’t need a whole bitcoin

One bitcoin is divided into 100 million smaller units called satoshis, or sats, named after Bitcoin’s creator. You can own, send and receive any amount down to one satoshi.

Keys, wallets and addresses

A Bitcoin wallet doesn’t store coins — they live on the blockchain. It stores your private keys, the secret numbers that let you spend your coins, and creates addresses from them that you can share to get paid.

Bitcoin addresses look different from TRON addresses. They usually start with 1, 3 or bc1; newer SegWit and Taproot addresses start with bc1. An address only works on its own network: you can’t send bitcoin to a TRON address, or the other way round.

If you lose your private keys or your recovery phrase, nobody can spend the bitcoin they control — there’s no reset button. A large number of bitcoin is believed to be lost forever this way.

Fees

Bitcoin fees don’t depend on how much you send. They depend on how much space your transaction takes up in a block, measured in virtual bytes, and on how busy the network is. Fees are quoted in satoshis per virtual byte (sat/vB).

For example, a simple transaction of about 140 virtual bytes at 10 sat/vB costs 1,400 satoshis — whether it sends 0.001 BTC or 100 BTC. When many people want to send at the same time, the fee needed to get into the next block goes up.

Public, but not anonymous

Every Bitcoin transaction is visible to everyone, forever. Addresses don’t carry names, so Bitcoin is pseudonymous rather than anonymous: once an address is linked to a person — for example through an exchange that knows its customers — their payments can often be traced.

Upgrades and the Lightning Network

Bitcoin changes slowly and carefully, because the people who run nodes have to accept every upgrade. Two important ones were SegWit in 2017, which made room for more transactions per block, and Taproot in 2021, which improved privacy and flexibility. The Lightning Network is a separate layer on top of Bitcoin for small, almost instant payments, which are settled on the Bitcoin blockchain later.

Milestones

• 31 October 2008. The whitepaper “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” is published.
• 3 January 2009. The first block, the genesis block, is mined.
• 12 January 2009. The first transaction between two people: Satoshi Nakamoto sends 10 BTC to Hal Finney.
• 22 May 2010. Laszlo Hanyecz pays 10,000 BTC for two pizzas, the first known purchase of goods with bitcoin. The date is now known as Bitcoin Pizza Day.
• 2012 to 2024. Four halvings cut the new bitcoin per block from 50 to 3.125.
• January 2024. US regulators approve the first spot bitcoin ETFs, funds traded on the stock exchange that hold bitcoin.

The risks

• Big price swings. Bitcoin’s price has fallen by more than 70% from a peak several times, for example in 2018 and in 2022. It can rise or fall sharply within days.
• Transfers are final. Nobody can reverse a payment sent to the wrong address.
• Lost keys, lost coins. Without your private keys or recovery phrase, there’s no way back in.
• Scams. Fake investment platforms, giveaways and impersonators use Bitcoin’s fame. Nobody can guarantee you a return.
• Changing rules. How bitcoin is regulated and taxed differs from country to country, and keeps changing.

Bitcoin and Striblo

You can look up any Bitcoin address in X-Ray and follow Bitcoin’s network data in the metric library. Striblo Intelligence is a data platform, so you can’t buy or store bitcoin here.

Crypto basics · 7 min read

The Bitcoin halving: everything you need to know

Every 210,000 blocks — roughly every four years — the number of new bitcoin created with each block is cut in half. This event, the halving, is written into Bitcoin’s code. It’s the reason there will never be more than 21 million bitcoin, and one of the most talked-about dates in crypto.

Happens every

210,000 blocks, about 4 years

Last halving

20 April 2024, block 840,000

New bitcoin per block

3.125 BTC

Next halving

Expected in 2028, block 1,050,000

After the next halving

1.5625 BTC per block

Last new bitcoin

Around the year 2140

What exactly is cut in half?

When a miner adds a block, it receives a reward made of two parts: the block subsidy — brand-new bitcoin that didn’t exist before — and the fees paid by the transactions in that block. The halving cuts only the subsidy. Fees aren’t affected, and nobody’s existing bitcoin changes.

The subsidy started at 50 BTC per block in 2009. It has been halved four times since then and is 3.125 BTC today.

Every halving so far

Why a block number, not a date?

The halving isn’t set for a calendar date but for a block height: block 210,000, 420,000, 630,000 and so on — every multiple of 210,000. Blocks arrive every ten minutes on average, but not exactly: sometimes faster, sometimes slower. So the date of the next halving is only an estimate until shortly before.

The math: 210,000 blocks × 10 minutes is 2.1 million minutes, about 1,458 days or four years. In practice, blocks have often come a little faster than every ten minutes, so halvings have tended to arrive a few months before the four years were up.

Why Bitcoin has halvings

Satoshi Nakamoto wanted a currency with a fixed, predictable supply that no person, company or government can change on a whim. The halvings make new supply shrink step by step, a little like a gold mine that yields less and less over time.

Every period between two halvings adds half as many coins as the one before: 10.5 million bitcoin in the first four years, 5.25 million in the next, then 2.625 million, and so on. Add them up and the total gets closer and closer to 21 million without ever passing it. Because rewards are rounded down to whole satoshis, the true maximum is slightly lower: about 20,999,999.98 BTC.

What changes on halving day

From one block to the next, the number of new bitcoin coming into existence each day is cut in half. With about 144 blocks a day — six an hour, around the clock — the math looks like this:

What it means for miners

For miners, the halving is like a pay cut of up to 50% overnight. Their costs — electricity, machines, cooling and buildings — stay the same, but the new bitcoin they earn per block is halved.

Miners with old machines or expensive electricity may stop making a profit and switch off. When that happens, blocks arrive a little more slowly until the next difficulty adjustment — every 2,016 blocks, about two weeks — makes mining easier again. The network keeps running; this has happened after every halving so far.

In the long run, as the subsidy keeps shrinking, transaction fees will have to make up a growing share of miners’ income. Whether fees alone will be enough to keep Bitcoin as secure as it is today is one of the big open questions about its future.

Halvings and the price

Halvings get a lot of attention because of what happened to the price afterwards. These are rounded prices in US dollars:

• 2012 halving. About $12 on the day; above $1,000 at the end of 2013.
• 2016 halving. About $650 on the day; close to $20,000 in December 2017.
• 2020 halving. About $8,600 on the day; about $69,000 in November 2021.
• 2024 halving. About $64,000 on the day; above $100,000 for the first time in December 2024.

But each of the first three peaks was followed by a fall of roughly 75 to 85%, and four halvings are far too few to prove a rule. Many other things moved the price at the same time: interest rates, new investors and new products such as the US spot bitcoin ETFs, regulation and the mood of the markets. And because halving dates are known years in advance, markets can take them into account long before they happen.

Common misunderstandings

• “The halving cuts my bitcoin in half.” No. The coins you already have don’t change at all. Only the new supply per block is halved.
• “Fees get cheaper, or more expensive.” The halving doesn’t change fees. They depend on how busy the network is.
• “The network stops for the halving.” No. Blocks keep coming; the halving block is just the first one with the smaller reward.
• “Mining ends in 2140.” New bitcoin stops around then, but miners will keep adding blocks and earning the transaction fees.

Do other cryptocurrencies have halvings?

Some coins that copied Bitcoin’s design do. Litecoin, for example, halves its block reward every 840,000 blocks, also about every four years. Many others, including TRX on TRON, don’t: their supply follows different rules.

Crypto basics · 6 min read

Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?

Satoshi Nakamoto is the name used by the person — or group of people — who created Bitcoin. Satoshi wrote the Bitcoin whitepaper, released the first software, worked with the first developers for about two years and then disappeared. More than 15 years later, nobody has proven who Satoshi is.

Known as

Satoshi Nakamoto, a pseudonym

Whitepaper

31 October 2008

First software

9 January 2009

Last forum post

December 2010

Last known emails

April 2011

Early bitcoin

Up to about 1.1 million BTC (estimate)

From whitepaper to Bitcoin

On 31 October 2008, a message signed “Satoshi Nakamoto” arrived on a mailing list about cryptography. It linked to a nine-page paper called “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”, which described electronic money that could be sent directly from one person to another without going through a bank.

Two months later, on 3 January 2009, Satoshi mined the first block, the genesis block. Hidden in it is a headline from that day’s edition of The Times, a British newspaper, about the government preparing a second bailout for banks. It’s often read as a comment on the financial crisis that Bitcoin was born in.

On 9 January 2009, the first version of the Bitcoin software was released. Three days later, Satoshi sent 10 BTC to the programmer Hal Finney: the first Bitcoin transaction between two people.

Two years of work, then silence

Throughout 2009 and 2010, Satoshi wrote most of the code, fixed bugs and answered questions on forums and by email, while more and more developers joined in. As far as is known, Satoshi never spoke to anyone on the phone or met anyone involved in person, and only ever communicated in writing.

In December 2010, Satoshi posted on the Bitcoin forum for the last time. By then the lead role in the project had passed to the developer Gavin Andresen. In one of the last known emails, in April 2011, Satoshi wrote to another developer: “I’ve moved on to other things.” After that, Satoshi went silent.

What we know about Satoshi

Everything we know comes from what Satoshi wrote and coded:

• Excellent English, with British spelling. Satoshi wrote words like “colour” and “optimise”, and used British expressions such as “bloody hard”.
• Deep technical knowledge. Satoshi combined ideas from cryptography, computer networks and economics, and wrote the first version of the software in C++.
• Careful about privacy. Satoshi used anonymous email services and never shared personal details that could be checked.
• A stated background that doesn’t add up. Satoshi’s profile on one forum said Satoshi was a man living in Japan, born in 1975. Because of the English and the hours at which Satoshi was active, many people doubt it.

What we don’t know

We don’t know Satoshi’s real name, nationality or age, whether Satoshi was one person or a team, or whether Satoshi is still alive. Even the name may be made up: Satoshi is a Japanese first name, and Nakamoto is a common Japanese surname.

Satoshi’s bitcoin

In Bitcoin’s first year very few people were mining, and Satoshi was one of them. By studying a recognisable pattern in the earliest blocks, researchers — the best-known analysis is by Sergio Demian Lerner — concluded that one early miner, very likely Satoshi, mined up to about 1.1 million BTC. Other researchers think the number is lower.

Almost none of those coins has ever moved. If Satoshi still controls them, Satoshi is one of the largest holders of bitcoin in the world — and moving even a few of them would be headline news, because it would suggest that whoever holds the keys is still around.

Who has been named?

Over the years, journalists, researchers and fans have pointed to many people. None of these suggestions has been proven.

• Hal Finney. A respected cryptographer and the first person to receive bitcoin from Satoshi. He said he wasn’t Satoshi, and died in 2014.
• Nick Szabo. A computer scientist who designed “bit gold”, an earlier idea for digital money. He has denied being Satoshi.
• Adam Back. The inventor of Hashcash, a proof-of-work system mentioned in the Bitcoin whitepaper. He has denied being Satoshi.
• Dorian Nakamoto. An engineer in California whose birth name is Satoshi Nakamoto. A magazine named him in 2014; he denied any connection to Bitcoin.
• Craig Wright. An Australian computer scientist who claimed to be Satoshi from 2016 onwards. In March 2024, the High Court in London ruled that he is not Satoshi Nakamoto and did not write the whitepaper.
• Peter Todd. A Bitcoin developer named in a 2024 television documentary. He has denied being Satoshi.

How could anyone prove it?

Saying “I am Satoshi” proves nothing. Real proof would be cryptographic: a message signed with a private key that is known to be Satoshi’s, such as the key to one of the earliest blocks — or moving some of the early coins. Anyone can check a signature, and nobody can fake one without the key. So far, nobody has given such proof in public.

Why the mystery matters

Satoshi’s absence turned out to be one of Bitcoin’s strengths. There’s no founder who can be pressured, arrested or bribed into changing the rules, and no company that owns Bitcoin. Changes have to be accepted by the people who run the network, and they are discussed in the open.

It also means Bitcoin doesn’t depend on trusting a person. What counts is the code and the rules that thousands of nodes check — and anyone can read them.

The name lives on

The smallest unit of bitcoin, 0.00000001 BTC, is called a satoshi. Many Bitcoin users count in satoshis, or sats, rather than in whole bitcoin.

Basics · 3 min read

What is TRON?

TRON is a public blockchain — a shared record of transactions that many computers keep in sync, so people can send value to each other without a bank in the middle. Its network has been running since 2018.

TRX, the network’s own coin

TRX is TRON’s native coin. It pays for activity on the network, and it can be staked to get the resources that transactions use.

Fast and inexpensive transfers

A new block is added about every three seconds, so a transfer usually shows up within seconds. Fees are typically low, which is one reason TRON carries a large share of the world’s stablecoin transfers.

Who keeps the network running

Blocks are produced by 27 elected validators called Super Representatives. TRX holders vote for them by staking TRX, and the votes are counted again every few hours.

Addresses

A TRON address starts with a capital T and has 34 characters. The same address holds TRX and every TRON token.

TRON on Striblo Intelligence

X-Ray reads any TRON address, and the whale tracker follows large TRON transfers. The metric library shows stablecoins and value locked on TRON.

Basics · 3 min read

TRC-20 tokens and USDT

Most tokens on TRON follow a shared standard called TRC-20. It works like ERC-20 on Ethereum: every token is a small program — a smart contract — with its own address on the network.

One name, many networks

USDT exists on several blockchains, including TRON and Ethereum. These versions aren’t interchangeable: USDT on TRON (TRC-20) can only move between TRON addresses.

That’s why the network matters as much as the address. Sending a token on the wrong network can mean the funds are lost or very hard to recover.

Check the contract, not just the name

Anyone can create a token and call it USDT. The real one is defined by its contract address. For USDT on TRON, that’s:

TR7NHqjeKQxGTCi8q8ZY4pL8otSzgjLj6t

If a token you never bought shows up in a wallet, be careful: unknown tokens are often used to lure people to scam websites.

Tokens need energy to move

Moving a TRC-20 token runs its contract, which uses energy. If an account has none, the network burns TRX to pay for it — so a self-custody wallet that holds only tokens can’t send them.

Some wallets and exchanges cover this for you and show the network fee on the review screen before you confirm.

TRON tokens in X-Ray

X-Ray shows the TRC-20 tokens an address holds and marks spam and look-alike tokens, so you can tell the real USDT from a copy.

Basics · 3 min read

Network fees on TRON

Every transaction on TRON uses two resources: bandwidth and energy. You can get them by staking TRX, or let the network burn a little TRX to cover them.

Bandwidth

Bandwidth covers the size of a transaction in bytes. Each account gets a small amount free every day, which is often enough for a simple TRX transfer.

Energy

Energy covers the work a smart contract does. A TRC-20 transfer such as USDT runs a contract, so it needs energy as well as bandwidth — that’s why it usually costs more than sending TRX.

Staking or burning

Accounts that stake TRX receive bandwidth and energy in return. Without enough of them, the network burns TRX from the sender’s account to pay for the transaction.

What changes the fee

The fee depends on the kind of transaction, on whether the receiving address has held that token before, and on network settings that TRON’s validators can change.

Before you send

Check the network fee and the amount the recipient gets on your wallet’s review screen before you confirm.

Safety · 3 min read

Sending crypto safely

Blockchain transfers can’t be reversed. A minute of checking before you confirm is the best protection you have.

1. Check the network. Make sure the receiving side expects TRON (TRC-20). The same coin on another network isn’t the same thing.
2. Check the whole address. Compare every character, not just the first and last few. Malware and look-alike addresses are made to pass a quick glance.
3. Don’t copy addresses from your history. Scammers send tiny amounts from addresses that look like ones you’ve used, hoping you’ll copy theirs next time. This is called address poisoning.
4. Send a small test first. For a new recipient or a large amount, send a little and ask them to confirm it arrived.
5. Save the addresses you trust. On an exchange, turn on the withdrawal whitelist if it has one, so it only sends to addresses you’ve approved.
6. Read the review screen. Check the asset, the amount, the network fee and what the recipient gets before you confirm.
7. Protect your account. Turn on two-factor authentication and never share your password or codes. Striblo will never ask for them.

Safety · 3 min read

How to spot crypto scams

Most crypto losses don’t come from hacked blockchains — they come from people being tricked into sending funds or sharing access. These are the patterns to watch for.

• Fake support. Someone offers help by message or phone and asks for your password, a code or remote access to your device. Real support never asks for these.
• Look-alike websites and apps. Phishing pages copy a real log-in page on a slightly different address. Type the address yourself or use a bookmark.
• Guaranteed returns. Promises of fixed daily profits, doubling schemes and giveaways that ask you to send crypto first are scams.
• Pressure to act now. Urgency is a tool: your account will be closed, this is your last chance. Stop and check through an official channel.
• Romance and fake jobs. A new online friend or a job offer that ends with you sending crypto, or paying to unlock a payment, is a common pattern.
• Address poisoning. Tiny transfers from look-alike addresses appear in your history, so you copy the wrong address later.

If something feels wrong

Stop and don’t send anything. Contact Striblo through this website. If you’ve shared your password or a 2FA code, change your password straight away and set up two-factor authentication again.

Tokens · 3 min read

Stablecoins and their risks

A stablecoin is a token designed to keep a steady price, usually one US dollar. Stablecoins are popular for moving value quickly without the price swings of most crypto-assets.

How they keep their price

Different stablecoins use different designs. Some are backed by reserves such as cash and short-term government bonds held by the issuer — USDT works this way. Others are backed by crypto-assets locked as collateral — USDD is designed this way.

What can go wrong

• Losing the peg. A stablecoin can trade below its target price, briefly or for longer, if people doubt what backs it.
• Frozen tokens. Many issuers can freeze the tokens held at a specific address, for example at the request of law enforcement. This applies to USDT on TRON.
• Issuer and reserve risk. You depend on the issuer really holding the reserves it reports, and on how openly it reports them.
• Rules can change. Stablecoin laws are changing in many countries, which can affect where and how a stablecoin can be used.

Stablecoins aren’t bank deposits and aren’t covered by deposit guarantee schemes.

Basics · 3 min read

Custodial or self-custody?

Whoever holds the private keys controls the crypto. That’s the difference between a custodial service and self-custody.

Self-custody

You keep your own keys, in a wallet app or a hardware device. Nobody can move your funds without them — but if you lose the keys or your recovery phrase, nobody can help you get them back.

Custodial

A provider holds the keys and keeps track of what belongs to each customer. You log in with an account, can recover access if you forget your password, and can ask for support — but you rely on the provider’s security and on the provider itself.

Striblo Intelligence holds nothing

Striblo Intelligence is a data platform. It holds no funds and no keys, so neither of these models applies to it.

How Striblo protects assets

Which is right for you?

Many people use both: a custodial service for everyday transfers and swaps, and self-custody for what they keep for longer. Whatever you choose, keep your log-in details and recovery information safe.