If you bought a single bitcoin a year ago, you would've paid just under $13,800 for it. However, if you wanna sell that same bitcoin today it is worth over $7,284. Which really begs the question, what exactly is a bitcoin? The idea is that this is a virtual currency that isn't backed by anything physical. It's really important to know that it's not a stock. It is a currency. Unlike something like cash, which is printed by a government and you can hold it in your hand, bitcoin relies on something called "the blockchain". This is to imagine a ledger. Every time anyone buys or sells anything related to bitcoin is recorded in this ledger called the "the blockchain" and then it is copied hundreds of thousands of times every single hour across multiple computers to make sure that everyone is on the exact same page. What makes this interesting is the idea that because it is copied across all these different computers and because it all is public, before I say wanna go buy a bitcoin from ken or before tries to sell me a pizza for a whole bitcoin because he's greedy and wants to sell me a $7,284 pizza. I can actually see exactly how many bitcoin are in his specific wallet or vice versa. It is all totally public.
