Bitcoin

Bitcoin is the original cryptocurrency. After emerging from cypherpunk internet forums in the late aughts, the digital asset has grown to become one oof the globe's most valuable commodities by market capitalization, trailing gold and silver. Investors liken the cryptocurrency to digital gold. 

Bitcoin is not controlled by any single entity. Instead, a decentralized network of computers work to verify transactions. These computers are kept honest by a system known as mining, where one participant who correctly verifies the transactions receives some Bitcoin every 10 minutes. 

Remarkably, the identity behind Bitcoin's inventor, Satoshi Nakamoto, remains an unsolved mystery nearly two decades since the cryptocurrency's launch in 2009. Nakamoto's crypto wallet, which has never moved any of its 1.1 million Bitcoin, makes the pseudonymous founder one of the world's richest people.