But what is Bitcoin really? It is a new form of currency known as cryptocurrency or crypto for short, however it's not like everyday paper money that were used too. It is a form of digital currency invented by a mysterious person known as Satoshi Nakamoto. The goal was to create a peer-to-peer system for online payments (peer-to-peer means that it's decentralized and works independent of any financial institution) Think of it like this - when you go into a coffee shop to buy a latte with your bank card, you don't actually give any money to the cafe owner the bank does. When you use digital currency there's no banks, no entities, or governments that control it, eliminating the need for a middleman.

So where do Bitcoin and other Cryptos come from? They are mined, but not in a traditional sense as you might be thinking with a pickaxe underground, instead they are done with computing complex mathematical equations. Once the equations are solved then new bitcoins are generated or mined. The term mining is commonly used because like our mineral resources, there's only a limited number of bitcoins out there, in the case of Bitcoin that number is around 19 million .