CryptocurrencyBTC
Bitcoin (BTC)
The first decentralised cryptocurrency, launched in 2009, secured by proof-of-work mining and capped at 21 million coins.
What Bitcoin (BTC) means
Bitcoin is a decentralised digital currency that launched in January 2009 following a white paper published under the name Satoshi Nakamoto. It runs on a public blockchain maintained by a global network of nodes, with new blocks produced roughly every ten minutes by miners competing under a proof-of-work consensus rule. Transactions are broadcast, validated against the rules by every node, and appended in blocks; ownership is proved by a private key, and there is no issuer or administrator able to reverse a confirmed transfer.
The monetary policy is fixed in software. Total supply is capped at 21 million coins, and the block subsidy paid to miners halves approximately every 210,000 blocks, which works out to roughly every four years. The most recent halving cut the reward from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC per block. This predetermined and decreasing issuance is the basis of the argument that bitcoin is a scarce asset, and it is why the halving schedule attracts so much attention from traders.
For a trader, bitcoin behaves nothing like a major currency pair. It trades continuously including weekends, realised volatility is routinely several times that of EUR/USD, and drawdowns exceeding 70 percent have occurred more than once. Access can be direct ownership through a wallet, or synthetic exposure through derivatives where no coin is ever held. Regulatory treatment, tax treatment and the protections available differ sharply between those routes and between jurisdictions, and position sizing should reflect the volatility rather than habit.
Worked example
A trader used to risking 1 percent on a EUR/USD trade with a 30 pip stop must size a bitcoin position very differently, since a normal daily range of 4 percent means an equivalent stop distance can be thousands of dollars wide.
Related terms
- BlockchainA shared, append-only ledger of transactions grouped into cryptographically linked blocks and validated by a distributed network.
- Bitcoin HalvingThe programmed event every 210,000 blocks that cuts the bitcoin block reward in half, slowing new supply issuance.
- Crypto MiningCompeting to validate blockchain transactions using computing power, in exchange for newly issued coins and transaction fees.
- Crypto CFDA derivative tracking a cryptocurrency's price where the trader never owns the coin, banned for UK retail clients and heavily restricted elsewhere.
- Crypto Market CapA token's price multiplied by its circulating supply, used to compare relative size but easily distorted by supply assumptions.
Frequently asked questions
What does Bitcoin (BTC) mean in forex trading?
The first decentralised cryptocurrency, launched in 2009, secured by proof-of-work mining and capped at 21 million coins.
How does Bitcoin (BTC) work in practice?
The monetary policy is fixed in software. Total supply is capped at 21 million coins, and the block subsidy paid to miners halves approximately every 210,000 blocks, which works out to roughly every four years. The most recent halving cut the reward from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC per block. This predetermined and decreasing issuance is the basis of the argument that bitcoin is a scarce asset, and it is why the halving schedule attracts so much attention from traders.
What is an example of Bitcoin (BTC)?
A trader used to risking 1 percent on a EUR/USD trade with a 30 pip stop must size a bitcoin position very differently, since a normal daily range of 4 percent means an equivalent stop distance can be thousands of dollars wide.
Trade with a regulated broker
Understanding the terminology is the cheap part. The expensive part is choosing a counterparty whose execution, financing and withdrawal behaviour match what the marketing implies. Every broker below has been reviewed with a funded live account, and each review states which legal entity and which regulator applies to the account you would actually open.
Check the licence on the regulator's own register before you deposit — our regulators directory explains what each authority enforces, from leverage caps to compensation limits.