human
I've been hearing a lot of buzz about bitcoin. What is it and how does it work?
assistant
Bitcoin is a digital currency that uses cryptography to secure and verify transactions as well as to control the creation of new units. It was created in 2009 by Satoshi Nakamoto, who published the original paper describing its design. The main feature of Bitcoin is that it is decentralized, meaning there is no central authority or bank managing the currency. Instead, users can send and receive bitcoins directly from each other through a peer-to-peer network. This makes it much more secure than traditional payment methods such as credit cards, which are vulnerable to fraud and theft. Additionally, because it’s decentralized, there is no single point of failure for the system, making it more resilient to cyberattacks.