Bitcoin (BTC) perpetual market

Bitcoin is the first and largest cryptocurrency, introduced in a 2008 whitepaper by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto and launched in January 2009 with the mining of its genesis block. It runs on a decentralized proof-of-work blockchain secured by miners who compete to append blocks roughly every ten minutes, and its supply is capped at 21 million coins released on a schedule that halves the block reward about every four years. Bitcoin was conceived as peer-to-peer electronic cash that settles without banks or intermediaries, but it is now held mainly as a store of value and treasury asset, often described as digital gold. Its 2017 and 2021 bull markets brought it into the mainstream, and the 2024 approval of US spot exchange-traded funds opened it to large institutional allocations. It remains the market's reserve asset, the benchmark against which every other crypto asset is measured.