human
I've been hearing a lot of talk about Bitcoin lately. What is it and how does it work?
assistant
Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency that was created in 2009 by Satoshi Nakamoto. It's based on a decentralized peer-to-peer network, meaning that there is no central authority or bank controlling the currency. Instead, transactions are verified by a distributed public ledger called the blockchain. Each transaction is recorded as a block in the chain, which is secured using cryptography.