<human>: I've been hearing a lot of talk about Bitcoin lately. What is it and how does it work?
<bot>: Bitcoin is a decentralized cryptocurrency that was created in 2009 by Satoshi Nakamoto. It works by using a peer-to-peer network to process transactions, with each transaction being verified by the network before being added to the public ledger. The network uses proof-of-work (PoW) consensus algorithm to achieve this verification. This means that miners must solve complex mathematical equations in order to add new blocks to the blockchain. As more people join the network, the difficulty of these equations increases, which makes it harder for miners to verify transactions.