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Additional resources

Binance Academy (2020). What Is Bitcoin? https://academy.binance.com/blockchain/what-is-bitcoin
Blockchain.com. Bitcoin Block Explorer. https://www.blockchain.com/explorer
Dryja, T., Poon, J (2016). The Bitcoin Lightning Network: Scalable Off-Chain Instant Payments. https://lightning.network/lightning-network-paper.pdf
Lightning Network. Website. https://lightning.network/
Nakamoto, S. (2008). Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
Wikipedia. List of Bitcoin Forks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bitcoin_forks
Trust Wallet. Bitcoin Wallet. https://trustwallet.com/bitcoin-wallet/

Bitcoin (BTC) is a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency that aims to function as a means of exchange that is independent of any central authority. BTC can be transferred electronically in a secure, verifiable, and immutable way.
Launched in 2009, BTC is the first virtual currency to solve the double-spending issue by timestamping transactions before broadcasting them to all of the nodes in the Bitcoin network. The Bitcoin Protocol offered a solution to the Byzantine Generals' Problem with a blockchain network structure, a notion first created by Stuart Haber and W. Scott Stornetta in 1991.
Bitcoin’s whitepaper was published pseudonymously in 2008 by an individual, or a group, with the pseudonym “Satoshi Nakamoto”, whose underlying identity has still not been verified.
The Bitcoin protocol uses an SHA-256d-based Proof-of-Work (PoW) algorithm to reach network consensus. Its network has a target block time of 10 minutes and a maximum supply of 21 million tokens, with a decaying token emission rate. To prevent fluctuation of the block time, the network's block difficulty is re-adjusted through an algorithm based on the past 2016 block times.
With a block size limit capped at 1 megabyte, the Bitcoin Protocol has supported both the Lightning Network, a second-layer infrastructure for payment channels, and Segregated Witness, a soft-fork to increase the number of transactions on a block, as solutions to network scalability.