[JLMounce]

At its core, Bitcoin is designed to be an end around fiat currencies controlled by a central entity. Bitcoin has no corporation running it, does not run on a central computer and has no centralized organization making decisions about how or when it can be used.

It works on the concept of "proof of work." In order to mine individual coins, real work has to be done. That work is primarily by computers, but running those computers takes energy in the form of electricity, which is generated from various sources that require human input.

It has a limited supply. Only 20 million bitcoin can ever be mined. There's somewhere around 19.5 million coins in existence now, but at current pace, it will take another 120sih years to mine the last coin. That means it's scarce and can't be created out of thin air and inflated away like fiat currency.

It can't be dismantled or regulated in any meaningful way. The only way to get rid of it would be to complete terminate the internet as a whole, including all intranets and local networks. Since nobody runs it, there's nobody to go after to regulate it.

That's pretty much the basics of it. I recommend reading the white paper for more.