Bitcoin is regarded as the first decentralized cryptocurrency using blockchain technology to facilitate payments and digital transactions. Instead of using a central bank to control the money supply in an economy (like the Federal Reserve in tandem with the U.S. Department of the Treasury) or third parties to verify transactions (such as your local bank, credit card issuer, and the merchant’s bank), Bitcoin’s blockchain acts as a public ledger of all transactions in the history of Bitcoin.
The ledger allows a party to prove they own the Bitcoin they’re trying to use and can help prevent fraud and other unapproved tampering with the currency. A decentralized currency can also make peer-to-peer money transfers (like those between parties in two different countries) faster and less expensive than traditional currency exchanges involving a third-party institution.