Technology

Imagine a form of money that no government controls, no central bank can inflate, and no corporation can shut down. A currency with a fixed supply of 21 million units — hard-coded, unchangeable, enforced by mathematics rather than policy. That’s Bitcoin. Since its launch in 2009 by the pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin has grown from a cypherpunk experiment to a trillion-dollar asset class. The US government now holds over 200,000 BTC seized from criminal cases. BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, operates the biggest spot Bitcoin ETF with over $50 billion in assets. And in 2026, Bitcoin is treated by the SEC and CFTC as a commodity — putting it in the same regulatory category as gold and oil. ...

Imagine a ledger — not one locked in a bank vault, but thousands of identical copies spread across computers worldwide. Every time someone adds a new entry, every copy updates simultaneously. Nobody can erase a past entry. Nobody can cheat the math. That ledger is a blockchain. Blockchain is the foundational technology behind Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the broader crypto economy — but its applications stretch far beyond digital currency. From Walmart’s food supply chain to JPMorgan’s interbank settlement network, blockchain is quietly reshaping how the world records, transfers, and verifies information. This guide explains how it works, how US companies and regulators are adopting it, and what it means for the average person. ...