30 Frequently Asked Questions About Bitcoin

• A digital asset whose transactions are validated and recorded by a P2P network without a central issuer
• Satoshi Nakamoto's whitepaper was published in 2008; the genesis block was created in January 2009
• Not legal tender; under Korean law it is classified as a virtual asset under the Virtual Asset User Protection Act
• Criticism: actual use as a payment method is minimal, and in substance it functions more as a speculative and store-of-value asset

• Developed by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto, who stopped public activity after 2011
• Early mined coins are estimated at about 1 million BTC and have never been moved
• Hal Finney, Nick Szabo, and Craig Wright have been floated as candidates, but none has been confirmed
• Counterpoint: some argue that revealing Satoshi's identity would actually undermine the decentralization narrative

• A block of bundled transactions is created roughly every 10 minutes, each linked in a chain via the hash of the previous block
• Tampering with a past block would require recalculating every subsequent block, making it effectively impossible
• Tens of thousands of nodes worldwide hold an identical ledger, so there is no single point of failure

• A proof-of-work competition to be the first to find a hash value that satisfies certain conditions
• The successful miner receives the newly issued coins plus transaction fees
• The current block reward is 3.125 BTC, and daily new issuance is about 450 BTC
• As of 2026, individual mining is effectively impossible, and the industry is dominated by large-scale data centers

• Bitcoin focuses on the single purpose of being a store of value and payment rail, and is extremely conservative about adding features
• Ethereum and others are smart-contract execution platforms that use proof-of-stake
• Comparative view: Bitcoin's strength is that it doesn't change, while altcoins' strength is that they can change
• Counterpoint: Bitcoin has been assessed as losing the competition as a payment method due to its lack of scalability

• 1 BTC equals 100,000,000 satoshis, a one-hundred-millionth unit
• The practical unit used for small payments and on the Lightning Network
• The perception that it's 'too late' if you can't buy a whole BTC is essentially an illusion created by the unit itself

• An issuance schedule hardcoded into the protocol, where the reward is halved every 210,000 blocks
• A design of absolute scarcity, in contrast with inflationary currencies
• Criticism: mainstream economics counters that a fixed total supply creates deflationary pressure, making it unsuitable as money

• As of June 24, 2026, about 20,047,481 BTC are in circulation, roughly 95.46% of the total cap
• As of June 2026, the remaining amount to be mined is about 957,000 BTC
• The last coin is projected to be mined around May 2140

Caution: Circulating supply increases daily, so the reference date must always be cited alongside the figure.

• The 4th halving occurred on April 20, 2024 at block 840,000, cutting the reward from 6.25 to 3.125 BTC
• The 5th halving will occur at block 1,050,000, estimated around April 18, 2028, with a reward of 1.5625 BTC
• Dates vary by site because block generation intervals aren't exactly 10 minutes but fluctuate with hashrate

Caution: The halving date is an estimate. It is more accurate to state it as 'around April 2028 (estimated)'.

• There is a statistical observation that a bull run has followed within 12 to 18 months in all four past cycles
• Counterpoint 1: with only four data points, the statistical significance is insufficient
• Counterpoint 2: in the 2024–2026 cycle, the all-time high arrived before the halving, breaking the historical pattern
• Counterpoint 3: the 2028 halving's reduction in new supply falls from 450 BTC/day to 225 BTC/day, a much smaller share of market cap than in previous cycles

• Estimates of permanent loss range from 2.3 to 3.7 million BTC, putting effective circulating supply at roughly 16 to 17.5 million BTC
• Main causes include early private-key loss, discarded hard drives, holder deaths, and transfers to burn addresses
• Caution: these estimates are based on long-dormant UTXOs, so figures vary widely depending on methodology

• $126,080, recorded on October 6, 2025, per CoinGecko
• The first time it crossed $100,000 was December 2024
• It crossed $1 in February 2011, $1,000 in late 2013, and $10,000 in 2017

Caution: Many sources report the $100,000 milestone as November 2024, but this is an error.

• As of August 12, 2026, the price is about $64,200, with a market cap of roughly $1.3 trillion, down about 49% from the all-time high
• The current correction of about 54% is the shallowest of any cycle on record; past cycles typically saw drawdowns of 77% to 93%
• Contributing factors cited include roughly $8 billion in net spot ETF outflows over eight weeks and receding expectations of rate cuts

Caution: Prices fluctuate in real time. This figure is as of August 12, 2026.

• The short answer is that it's unpredictable; the following is merely a distribution of forecasts, not evidence
• Bullish forecasts: JPMorgan $170,000, Standard Chartered $150,000
• Bearish forecasts: CryptoQuant $56,000 to $70,000, Bloomberg's Mike McGlone $10,000 scenario
• As of March 2026, Citi presented a three-scenario outlook: bearish $58,000, neutral $112,000, bullish $165,000
• Criticism: institutional price targets have no verified track record and tend to anchor strongly to the market price at the time they're published

• This depends on individual financial circumstances, investment horizon, and risk tolerance, so there is no generalized answer
• A conservative benchmark commonly used in the market is to cap crypto exposure at 5% or less of total assets
• Alternative approach: dollar-cost averaging instead of a lump-sum purchase spreads out entry-timing risk
• This page is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice

• In favor: the pattern of supply contracting after the halving, followed by a 12–18 month rally and then a decline, keeps repeating
• Against: Grayscale has pushed back on the four-year cycle theory, citing regulatory clarity and macro demand
• The 2024–2026 cycle may represent a structural break, since ETF adoption itself changed the composition of buyers and sellers
• For now, the question cannot be settled, and neither side is confirmed

• In January 2024, the U.S. SEC approved a batch of spot Bitcoin ETFs, including those from BlackRock, Fidelity, and Grayscale
• More than $35 billion flowed in during the first year alone
• Significance: access through brokerage accounts opened institutional demand channels such as pension funds and advisors
• Downside: ETF inflows and outflows have themselves become a new driver of price volatility

• A tool for storing private keys, not the coins themselves; the coins always exist on the blockchain
• Divided into hot wallets, which are connected to the internet, and cold wallets, which are kept offline
• Experts recommend cold storage for long-term holding

• Exchanges offer superior convenience and liquidity but carry risks of bankruptcy, hacking, and withdrawal freezes — Mt. Gox and FTX are prime examples
• A personal wallet gives full control, but if the keys are lost, recovery is impossible and the responsibility rests entirely with the holder
• Compromise: keep small amounts for trading on an exchange and separate long-term holdings into a hardware wallet

• There is no way to recover it — not customer support, not developers, not any government can restore it
• Best practices: record it offline on paper, store copies in multiple locations, and never take photos or store it in the cloud
• In fact, a large share of permanently lost Bitcoin disappeared this way

• The protocol itself has never had its ledger forged since 2009
• Actual incidents have occurred almost entirely at the periphery — exchanges, private key management, and phishing
• A 51% attack is a theoretical threat, but it is not economically viable at the current hashrate scale
• The quantum computing threat is a decades-away challenge that can be addressed by replacing the signature algorithm

• Fact: proof-of-work is designed to require large amounts of electricity, on a scale compared to that of entire countries
• Counterpoint: the share of stranded energy use, such as surplus hydropower or flared gas, is rising, along with the share of renewables
• Rebuttal: much of this data relies on self-reporting by the mining industry, limiting verifiability
• Proof-of-stake conversion has been proposed as an alternative, but the Bitcoin community rejects it as undermining the security model

• Every transaction is permanently recorded on a public ledger, making it more traceable than cash, if anything
• Estimates from analytics firms such as Chainalysis put illicit transactions at under 1% of the total
• Counterpoint: traceability drops sharply when funds pass through mixers or privacy coins

• Base-layer throughput is about 7 transactions per second, far below Visa's capacity of thousands
• Layer-2 solutions like the Lightning Network exist as a response
• Criticism: Lightning's adoption has been slow due to the burden of managing channel liquidity
• Reframing: if Bitcoin's goal is viewed as a final settlement layer rather than everyday payments, the design makes sense

• Blocking the network itself is impossible, but exchanges and banks, the points of contact with legal tender, can be regulated
• Case in point: after China's total ban on mining and trading in 2021, hashrate migrated to the U.S. and elsewhere before recovering
• Countervailing trend: in March 2025, the U.S. established a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve of about 200,000 BTC via executive order

• Similarities: constrained supply, absence of an issuer, and an inflation-hedge narrative
• Differences: gold has a 5,000-year history and industrial demand, while Bitcoin has a 17-year history with demand almost entirely investment-driven
• Counterpoint: in crisis periods, unlike gold, it has behaved like a risk asset correlated with tech stocks
• That said, as the market matures, there are periods where its volatility falls below that of Nvidia's stock

• No income tax applies to trading gains realized before December 31, 2026
• Transfers and lending from January 1, 2027 onward will be taxed, following three rounds of deferral
• Classified as other income, taxed at 20% national tax after an annual basic deduction of 2.5 million won, rising to about 22% including local income tax

• The key reference date is not the effective date but the day just before it, December 31, 2026
• Under the deemed acquisition cost rule, holdings from before the effective date use the greater of the market price on December 31, 2026 or the actual purchase price as the acquisition cost
• Preparation items: obtain balance certificates by exchange and wallet, secure proof of acquisition cost, and clean up any accounts held under others' names
• Caution: losses can only be offset against gains within the same tax year and cannot be carried forward to the following year
• Variable: since the effective date is written into law, it takes effect automatically unless the National Assembly amends it, but a fourth deferral could resurface due to inadequate tax infrastructure

• As of August 2026, no such product is listed domestically
• In the 2026 second-half economic growth strategy announced on July 14, 2026, the Financial Services Commission unveiled plans to introduce one via an amendment to the Capital Markets Act, likely including virtual assets within the scope of underlying assets
• Legislation for the Digital Asset Basic Act, which would govern the issuance and circulation of stablecoins, is also being pursued in parallel
• The timing of introduction, product structure, and custody method for underlying assets will be finalized through future discussions at the FSC and National Assembly

• It arises because capital controls, restrictions on corporate accounts, and limited access to overseas exchanges prevent arbitrage from functioning smoothly
• Because corporate-name real-name verified deposit/withdrawal accounts are not permitted, institutions face structural constraints in securing supply through domestic exchanges
• Proposed solutions include allowing corporate and institutional investor participation and a phased opening of foreign investment
• Practical takeaway: the larger the premium, the more disadvantaged domestic buyers are, so checking it before buying is essential