You don't need to understand every technical detail to use Bitcoin, just like you don't need to understand TCP/IP to use the internet. But understanding the basics shows why it can't be shut down, copied, or corrupted.
Imagine a Google Sheet that tens of thousands of people around the world all have an identical copy of. Every transaction is written in, and if you tried to change a past entry, everyone else's copy would immediately show yours as different. That's the blockchain: a public record nobody controls and nobody can secretly edit.
Imagine a global lottery where the tickets are math problems. Millions of computers around the world solve trillions of calculations per second. Whoever solves the puzzle first wins newly created Bitcoin and gets to add the next page to the ledger. It takes real energy, which is exactly what makes cheating too expensive to bother with.
| Event | Block Reward | Daily BTC | Ann. Inflation |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2009 Launch | 50 BTC | ~7,200 | โ |
| 2012 Halving 1 | 25 BTC | ~3,600 | ~8.4% |
| 2016 Halving 2 | 12.5 BTC | ~1,800 | ~4.0% |
| 2020 Halving 3 | 6.25 BTC | ~900 | ~1.8% |
| 2024 Halving 4 | 3.125 BTC | ~450 | ~0.85% |
| ~2028 Halving 5 | 1.5625 BTC | ~225 | ~0.4% |
Fed expanded M2 by ~40% in 25 months. Bitcoin's issuance schedule cannot be changed by anyone.
Every ~4 years, the number of new Bitcoin created per block is cut in half. This isn't a policy decision. It's code. No committee votes on it, no central bank overrides it. The supply schedule was set in 2009 and will run until roughly 2140, when the last fraction of a Bitcoin is mined.
Economists call this the stock-to-flow ratio: how much exists (stock) versus how much new supply enters per year (flow). After the 2024 halving, Bitcoin's stock-to-flow is higher than gold's. It's now the scarcest monetary asset humans have ever produced.
Higher stock-to-flow = harder to inflate the supply. Bitcoin is now roughly 2x harder than gold by this measure.
Every halving has been followed by a significant price increase within 12-18 months. The pattern is simple: supply of new coins drops overnight, demand continues growing, and the market reprices accordingly.
Returns diminish each cycle as the market cap grows. But the direction has been consistent across all four halvings.
Bitcoin's base layer settles billions of dollars globally with finality. The Lightning Network sits on top as a payment layer: instant, near-zero cost, and capable of millions of transactions per second. It's working infrastructure used by hundreds of millions of people.
Strike (global payments), Cash App (150M+ users), River, Bitrefill (gift cards with sats), El Salvador's Chivo national wallet, Nostr social network for micropayments, and thousands of merchants globally through BTCPay Server.
Last updated 2026-04-14. Not financial advice. Do your own research.