Bitcoin is many things. Bitcoin is not a stock. It is an entirely new asset class and new form of money. It is much more than simply money.

In order for it to exist, new technology had to be developed which we'll discuss a bit further below. The very first Bitcoin came into existence in January 2009.

Bitcoin is a special new class of money categorized as Cryptocurrency (or Crypto for short) and Bitcoin is not the only one of these that exists, it was simply the one that started them all.

Where Does Bitcoin Come From

People often ask where Bitcoin comes from, who owns it and creates more of them. But very much unlike the dollars in your bank account or wallet that you're used to using as money which are printed by the Central Bank of your government (Canada, in our case), no single entity owns, controls or creates Bitcoin.

The easiest way to understand this is to think of gold (or silver). Gold has long been considered a form of money which has been used for thousands of years, yet no single government or corporation owns, creates or controls gold and silver.

Instead both are mined from the earth, which can be done by anyone enterprising enough to prospect for it and build the mines to do so.

In this same way, Bitcoin is also mined, just not from the earth. It can be a little difficult to describe exactly how this process works, probably the easiest way to put it is that it is mined from the Internet.