Bitcoin Cryptocurrency: A Review

Abstract

Bitcoin, the term coined by a person or group pseudonymously called Satoshi Nakamoto, is considered the world's first decentralized digital currency. Since its release in 2009, there has been tremendous growth in market value of Bitcoin, with anonymity and distributed nature removing the need for any central authority being the driving force for its popularity. The technology is relatively new and complex for a layman to understand. However, there has been enough hype about it which has drawn the attention of researchers and nemesis alike to expose vulnerabilities in the system as well as explore the future perspectives of this new concept. This paper analyses major components of Bitcoin and related concepts of Blockchain, highlighting a few security concerns/ motivation to explore the future perspectives of this technology which is being considered analogous to the Internet revolution.