What Does Bitcoin Look Like

Short answer

• Bitcoin has no physical form, so there is no official coin, banknote, or printed token to picture. What people see instead depends on where they meet it. In news photographs and app icons, Bitcoin usually appears as an orange circle with a white letter B crossed by two vertical strokes, or as the text symbol ₿. In a wallet app, it appears as a balance figure, such as an amount in BTC, beside a list of transactions. As an address, it appears as a long string of letters and numbers, often shown as a QR code for scanning. On a public block explorer, it appears as a transaction record linking addresses, amounts, and confirmations. The shiny gold coins in stock photographs are illustrations, not Bitcoin itself. A small number of physical collector coins have held real Bitcoin in the past, but those coins are containers for a private key, not official Bitcoin issued by the network.

The Direct Answer: There Is Nothing to Hold

The most useful way to understand what Bitcoin looks like is to start with what it is not. It is not a coin that a central bank mints. It is not a banknote that a printer produces. It is not a file that sits in a folder on a phone, ready to be opened like a photograph. Bitcoin.org describes Bitcoin as a completely digital money, and in its wallet guidance it puts the point plainly: bitcoins exist as records on the blockchain, and a wallet holds the keys that control them, not the coins themselves.

That sentence explains almost every visual confusion around Bitcoin. When someone says they own Bitcoin, they do not mean that a digital object is stored inside their phone. They mean that the public record, called the blockchain, contains entries that their keys can control. The wallet app is the window onto that record. It shows a balance, a history, and the tools to send or receive. It does not contain coins in the way a leather wallet contains banknotes.

This is why two honest pictures of Bitcoin can look completely different. A news article may show a gold coin because that image instantly signals money to a reader. A wallet app may show only a number, because for the person using it, the number is the useful fact. A block explorer may show a long string of characters, because for the network, the record is the useful fact. None of these pictures is wrong on its own, but none of them is a photograph of Bitcoin as a physical object, because no such object exists.

Bitcoin is also one digital money among many, a wider picture covered in the companion article on how many cryptocurrencies are there. It also helps to separate Bitcoin from the many things that borrow its look. A gold colored souvenir coin, a plastic token, a cartoon coin in a video, and a photograph of a coin on a table are all representations. They may be attractive, and they may help explain a story, but they do not hold Bitcoin unless they were specifically made to carry a private key, a case covered later in this article. Most of the time, the coin in the picture holds nothing at all.

The Symbol and the Logo: The Face Most People Recognize

When people ask what Bitcoin looks like, they often mean its symbol. The symbol is a capital B with two vertical strokes passing through it, written as ₿. It is designed to sit alongside other currency signs, such as the dollar sign, and it is used before or after an amount in the same way that other currency symbols are used.

The symbol has its own place in the Unicode standard, which is the system that lets computers display the same characters across devices and languages. The Unicode Consortium lists the character as U+20BF BITCOIN SIGN, and it entered Unicode 10.0, released in June 2017. That date matters for a practical reason. Before a character is added to Unicode, different systems may display it inconsistently, or not at all. After its addition, a phone, a computer, or a website that supports current Unicode can show ₿ as ordinary text, rather than as a picture pasted into a page. Older devices and older fonts may still show a blank box or a question mark, which is a display problem, not a different symbol.

The familiar logo is a step beyond the text symbol. It is usually an orange circle containing a white B, tilted slightly, with two vertical strokes. Community histories describe an early gold coin design marked with the letters BC, followed by a B with two strokes, and then the orange circle version that is still widely used today. The precise dates and designers in those community histories should be treated with care, because they come from later retellings rather than from a single official design record. What can be said with confidence is that the orange circle logo is a community adopted mark, not a logo issued by a central Bitcoin authority, because Bitcoin has no central issuer to issue one. Different apps, websites, and news outlets may use slightly different versions of the logo, and that variation is normal.

Two details are worth noting for readers who meet the logo in different places. First, the three letter code BTC is the abbreviation most commonly used for Bitcoin in wallets, explorers, and market listings. It is a widely used shorthand, not an official currency code in the sense used for national currencies. Second, the orange and white color pairing is a design convention, not a rule of the network. A black and white version of the same B, or the plain text symbol ₿, refers to the same thing. Color does not change the meaning.

What Bitcoin Looks Like in a Wallet App

For most people who use Bitcoin, the wallet screen is the main visual experience, and it looks far less dramatic than a gold coin photograph. A typical wallet screen has a small number of elements, arranged for everyday use rather than for illustration.

At the top, there is usually a balance. The balance is shown as a decimal amount in BTC, sometimes with smaller units, and sometimes beside a value in a local currency for reference. The exact layout varies by app, and this article deliberately does not name or recommend any wallet, because wallet choice is a separate question and this article is about appearance, not about which product to use. What matters for this question is the form: a number, not a picture of a coin.

Below the balance, there is usually a list of transactions. Each entry shows a direction, such as sent or received, an amount, a date or time, and a status. A transaction that has just been broadcast may be shown as pending or unconfirmed. After it has been included in blocks on the blockchain, it is shown as confirmed, and the number of confirmations may be shown as well. Confirmations are a way of showing how deeply a transaction is buried in the public record. They are not a picture, but they are part of how Bitcoin is seen in practice, because they tell the reader whether a payment record is new or settled into the chain.

A wallet screen also has buttons or tabs for sending and receiving. The receive screen is where the address and the QR code appear, covered in the next section. The send screen asks for a destination address, an amount, and sometimes a fee setting. Some wallets show a fee as a separate figure, and some show it only as part of a total. The send screen may also show a warning if an address looks invalid, because addresses carry a built in checksum, a form of error checking that catches many typing mistakes. A checksum can catch a typo, but it cannot prove that the address belongs to the person the sender intended to pay. That distinction matters, and it returns in the section on scams.

A wallet may also show a history of addresses. Bitcoin.org recommends using a new address for each payment received, for privacy reasons, because anyone can look up the history of a public address. In practice, this means that a person who receives Bitcoin regularly may have many addresses over time, all linked to the same wallet through its keys. The balance shown on the main screen is the total across those addresses, as calculated by the wallet from the public record, not a single pile of coins sitting in one place.

Hardware wallets, which are small devices used to hold keys offline, look different again. They are physical objects, usually small rectangles with a screen and buttons, but the device itself is not Bitcoin. It is a key holder. Its small screen may show an address or an amount for checking before a transaction is approved. A photograph of such a device shows a piece of equipment, not Bitcoin itself, and the same is true of a phone showing a wallet app. The screen is the interface, not the asset.

Addresses and QR Codes: The Closest Thing to a Visible Face

If Bitcoin has a visible face at all, it is the address. An address is a string of letters and numbers that tells the network where a payment should be recorded. It functions roughly like an account number, with one important difference: the history of a Bitcoin address is public. Anyone who knows an address can look up its transactions on a block explorer. An address does not reveal a legal name on its own, but it is not private in the way a bank account number is treated as private.

Bitcoin addresses come in several formats, and the opening characters are the quickest way to recognize the family an address belongs to. The table below summarizes the main forms seen on the main network, the network used for real Bitcoin rather than test networks.

The prefixes are useful, but they are not a complete description. A legacy address and a Bech32 address can both receive Bitcoin, and the choice of format depends on the wallet and the spending conditions involved. Older wallets may not support the newest formats, and newer wallets may generate Bech32 addresses by default. The format does not change the nature of what is being received. It changes only how the destination is written down.

An example helps to make the shape concrete. The BIP 173 specification gives the main network example bc1qw508d6qejxtdg4y5r3zarvary0c5xw7kv8f3t4. That string is a specification example, not an address belonging to any reader, and it should not be used to send funds. Its shape is the point: a short network marker at the start, a separator, and then a longer body of lowercase letters and numbers, ending in a checksum. Real addresses look like this kind of string, long enough that copying and pasting is far safer than typing by hand.

QR codes are the visual shortcut for the same information. A QR code is a square pattern of black and white modules that a phone camera can read. In Bitcoin use, a QR code usually encodes an address, or a payment request that includes an address and sometimes an amount and a label. The payment request form is defined in BIP 21, which describes a bitcoin URI scheme that can carry those fields together. To the eye, a Bitcoin QR code looks like any other QR code: a square, a set of finder patterns in three corners, and a dense pattern inside. There is nothing in the pattern itself that says Bitcoin, unless the surrounding screen or printed page labels it as such. That is why a QR code should always be checked on screen after scanning, before any transaction is approved. The wallet should show the decoded address and amount, and those details, not the pattern, are what the sender is actually agreeing to.

One more visual point is worth making. Because addresses are long and easy to mistype, many wallets and payment pages show only part of an address in a list view, such as the first and last few characters, with an option to copy the full string. A shortened display is a user interface choice, not a different kind of address. The full string is what the network uses, and any comparison of addresses should compare the full strings, character by character, not just the visible ends.

What Bitcoin Looks Like on a Block Explorer

A block explorer is a website that displays the public blockchain record in readable form. It is the closest thing to seeing Bitcoin in its native form, because it shows the record itself rather than a wallet summary or an illustration. A reader does not need an account to view a public address or transaction on an explorer, although different explorers present the same underlying record in different layouts.

A typical transaction page shows a transaction identifier, which is a long string of letters and numbers that uniquely refers to that transaction. It shows the inputs, which are the earlier outputs being spent, and the outputs, which are the new entries created by the transaction, each linked to an address and an amount in BTC. It shows a fee, which is the difference between the total inputs and the total outputs in most cases, and it shows the block in which the transaction was included, together with a timestamp and a confirmation count that grows as further blocks are added.

New entries reach the record through mining, explained in the companion article on can you still mine bitcoin. A block page shows a different view of the same system. It lists a block number or height, a timestamp, the number of transactions in the block, and the block’s own identifier. A reader who follows a chain of blocks can see how transactions are grouped and ordered over time. This is the visual form of the phrase chain of blocks: a sequence of grouped records, each linked to the one before it, rather than a physical chain of metal links.

An address page on an explorer shows the total received, the total sent, and a list of transactions involving that address, in chronological order. This is also where the public nature of Bitcoin becomes visible in a concrete way. A single address page can show every transaction that address has ever been part of, as recorded on the blockchain. That transparency is a feature of the system, and it is also the reason that privacy guidance around address reuse exists. A reader who is shown an address page should understand that they are looking at a public record, not at a private account statement.

Explorers also show amounts in BTC, sometimes with a conversion to a local currency beside them. That conversion is a presentation choice by the explorer, using a market rate at the time of viewing. It is not part of the blockchain record itself, which is denominated in BTC. A reader who screenshots an explorer page should therefore note the date and time of the screenshot, because the converted figure beside a BTC amount can change while the BTC record itself does not.

Units and Balances: How Amounts Are Written

Bitcoin amounts are written as decimal numbers, and the unit used most often is BTC itself. A balance might be shown as 0.5 BTC, 0.025 BTC, or a much smaller figure, depending on the amount involved. Because one bitcoin can be divided into very small parts, wallets and explorers may also show amounts in smaller units. The smallest commonly named unit is the satoshi, often shortened to sat, and one bitcoin is commonly described as equal to 100 million satoshis. This subdivision is a convention for writing small amounts conveniently, not a separate kind of coin. A balance of 100 million satoshis and a balance of 1 BTC describe the same amount, written in different units.

The decimal form is important for reading wallet screens correctly. A balance shown as 0.001 BTC is one thousandth of a bitcoin, not one bitcoin, and a balance shown as 1,000 satoshis is a small fraction of a bitcoin, not a large sum. Misreading the decimal point is one of the simplest ways to misunderstand a screenshot, and it is a common feature of misleading images online, where a large looking number in small units is presented as if it were a large amount in BTC.

Amounts in BTC are also sometimes shown with many decimal places, because the system supports fine divisions. A wallet may show eight decimal places, which is enough to represent a single satoshi. An explorer may show the same amount with fewer places and round the display, while the underlying record keeps the full precision. For the purpose of this article, the exact number of decimal places shown is a display choice. What matters is that the reader checks the unit label, BTC or sats, before judging the size of any amount in a picture.

Physical Coins: Souvenirs, Novelty Pieces, and the Casascius Exception

Most physical objects called bitcoins are souvenirs. They are usually round, gold colored, and stamped with the B symbol, sometimes with words around the edge about decentralization or peer to peer exchange. They are made of base metal, plated metal, or plastic, and they are sold as gifts, desk ornaments, or props for photographs. They contain no Bitcoin, they cannot be spent on the network, and their value, if any, is as an object, not as a balance. A souvenir coin is best understood as a model of an idea, in the same way that a model ship is not a ship.

A second category is the novelty or display coin, made for use in videos, advertisements, or stage sets. These pieces may be larger than a real coin, shinier, or more detailed, because they are designed to read clearly on camera. They are not meant to deceive a careful viewer, but they can still mislead a casual viewer who assumes that a coin shown in a video must correspond to something that can be held and spent in the same form. The test is simple: if the piece has no private key and no address linked to a blockchain record, it is not holding Bitcoin, however convincing it looks.

The important exception is the Casascius coin, made in the early 2010s by Mike Caldwell under the name Casascius. These were physical metal coins and bars that did contain real Bitcoin, in a specific and limited sense. Each piece carried a private key hidden under a tamper evident hologram, with the first characters of the corresponding public address visible for checking. To use the Bitcoin, the holder peeled the hologram, revealed the key, and moved the funds to a wallet. Once peeled, the piece no longer held Bitcoin in that self contained form, although it might retain value as a collector item.

Sales of loaded Casascius pieces were suspended in November 2013, after the United States Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, known as FinCEN, treated the sale of preloaded tokens as money transmission, which would require registration and licensing. That suspension is why loaded Casascius pieces are a closed historical set, produced between 2011 and 2013, rather than an ongoing product line. Unloaded versions, which a buyer loads personally, are a different matter, and they do not arrive holding Bitcoin from the maker. Any modern physical coin that claims to be loaded should be treated with extra care, because the claim itself is the part that needs checking, and a hologram or a printed address does not prove that the key inside is valid, uncopied, or still funded.

The Casascius story is useful precisely because it shows what a physical Bitcoin would have to be in order to count. It would need to be a container for a key, not a coin issued by the network, and its value would depend entirely on the key remaining secret and the address remaining funded. A coin that merely looks like Bitcoin fails that test. A coin that passes it is not a currency issued in metal form. It is a key holder that happens to be shaped like a coin.

Why News Photographs Show Gold Coins

If Bitcoin has no physical form, why do news photographs so often show gold coins? The answer is practical, not technical. A story about a digital system needs a picture, and a gold coin is instantly readable as money, even to a reader who has never used a wallet app. A screenshot of a wallet balance, by contrast, is harder to photograph well, raises privacy questions, and may show amounts or addresses that should not be published. A block explorer page is even harder to turn into a clear photograph, because it is mostly text.

Photographers and picture editors therefore use gold coins, often arranged on a table, held in a hand, or shown against a circuit board background, as a visual shorthand. The coin in such a photograph is usually a souvenir or prop coin, chosen because it photographs well. The image is an illustration of a topic, not evidence of a physical object. A careful caption will say that the picture is an illustration, but many pictures circulate without their captions, especially on social media, where they are cropped, reposted, and reused in new contexts.

This reuse creates a second layer of confusion. A photograph taken to illustrate one story may be reused to illustrate a different story, a price movement, a scam warning, or an advertisement, without any change to the image itself. The coin in the picture stays the same, while the claim attached to it changes completely. Readers should therefore treat a gold coin photograph as a generic illustration, not as a depiction of a specific amount, a specific transaction, or a specific person’s holdings.

A related visual shorthand is the image of a coin floating above a glowing network, a circuit board, or a globe. These images are digital illustrations, often made with stock imagery or computer graphics, and they are meant to suggest connection and technology. They are not photographs of a network, because a network of computers around the world does not have a single appearance that can be photographed in one frame. A map of nodes, a diagram of blocks, or a chart of transactions can be informative, but each of those is a diagram, not a portrait.

Scam Imagery: Fake Coins, Fake Screenshots, and Borrowed Authority

The visual language of Bitcoin is also the visual language of Bitcoin scams, and readers should know the common patterns. Scam imagery rarely invents a new look. It borrows the familiar gold coin, the wallet balance, and the block explorer record, and then alters the details in ways that are hard to spot at a glance.

One common pattern is the fake coin offer. An advertisement or social media post shows a gold coin, or a set of coins, and suggests that the viewer can receive, claim, or buy physical Bitcoin at a special price. Because Bitcoin has no official physical form, there is no official physical Bitcoin to claim. A genuine collector piece, such as an unloaded souvenir coin, can be bought as an object, but it does not arrive containing Bitcoin from the network, and any offer that suggests otherwise should be treated as a warning sign, not as an opportunity.

A second pattern is the fake wallet screenshot. A screenshot shows a large balance, a series of incoming payments, or a withdrawal that appears to have succeeded, often with a well known wallet layout copied or imitated. Screenshots are easy to edit, and a balance figure in a screenshot proves nothing on its own, because the unit, the date, and the address behind the figure are not visible. A screenshot that shows only a balance, without a verifiable address or transaction record that the reader can check independently, should not be treated as evidence that funds exist or that a payment was made.

A third pattern is the fake block explorer page. A scammer may show a transaction record, a confirmation count, or an address page that appears to prove a payment, but the page may be an edited image, a page from a test network, or a page for a different asset altogether. The protection against this pattern is to check the record independently, by entering the address or transaction identifier into a block explorer directly, rather than by trusting a link or image supplied by the person making the claim. If the identifier cannot be found, or if it shows a different amount or address, the claim does not match the record.

A fourth pattern is borrowed authority. A post may place the Bitcoin logo beside the logo of a well known company, a news outlet, or a public figure, and suggest an endorsement that does not exist. Logos are easy to copy, and their presence in an image does not prove any relationship. Readers should check endorsement claims through the supposed endorser’s own channels, not through the post making the claim.

None of this means that every gold coin image is a scam. Many are honest illustrations. The distinction is in the claim attached to the image. An illustration that says, in effect, this story is about Bitcoin, is doing a normal editorial job. An image that says, in effect, send funds to this address and receive this coin, or this screenshot proves this payment, is making a claim that needs independent checking. When in doubt, the safest response is to stop, to check the address or transaction independently, and to seek advice from a trusted source before sending anything or sharing any key, seed phrase, or password. No legitimate recipient needs a reader’s private key or seed phrase, and any request for those details is a reason to stop immediately.

This article gives no investment advice and no recommendation to buy, sell, or hold Bitcoin or any other asset. Its purpose is to help readers recognize what they are looking at, so that a picture does not mislead them into a decision they would not otherwise make.

How to Tell a Real Representation from a Misleading One

A short checklist can help readers sort the pictures they meet into honest illustrations and claims that need checking.

First, ask what the picture is claiming. If it is only illustrating a topic, the gold coin is doing its job. If it is claiming a balance, a payment, or an ownership, the picture alone is not enough, and the underlying record should be checked.

Second, check the unit. A figure labeled sats is not the same as a figure labeled BTC, and a figure with no unit label should not be trusted at face value. A large number in small units can look impressive while representing a small amount.

Third, check the address or transaction identifier independently. Copy the identifier, enter it into a block explorer directly, and compare the amount, the address, and the confirmation status with the claim. If the identifier is missing, blurred, or replaced by a shortened display, the claim cannot be checked, and that itself is useful information.

Fourth, remember that a private key, a seed phrase, and a password are never part of a public picture of Bitcoin. A real wallet screen never needs to display a seed phrase to prove a balance, and a real transaction record never includes a private key. Any image that shows, or asks for, those secrets is not a normal representation of Bitcoin. It is a security risk.

Fifth, separate the object from the record. A coin, a device, and a phone are objects. A balance, an address, and a transaction are records. A photograph of an object can be genuine while saying nothing about the record, and a record can be genuine while having no photograph at all. Keeping those two categories separate prevents most visual misunderstandings about Bitcoin.

What Bitcoin Does Not Look Like: A Summary

The table below collects the main distinctions in this article into a single reference. It is useful for readers who arrive with a specific image in mind and want to check it quickly.

FAQ

Does Bitcoin have a physical form?

No. Bitcoin is a completely digital money, and its existence is as records on the blockchain. A wallet holds the keys that control those records, not coins themselves. Physical coins stamped with the Bitcoin symbol are illustrations, souvenirs, or, in the historical Casascius case, containers for a private key. They are not official Bitcoin issued by the network.

What is the Bitcoin symbol?

The Bitcoin symbol is ₿, a capital B with two vertical strokes. It is listed in Unicode as U+20BF BITCOIN SIGN, and it entered Unicode 10.0 in June 2017. The familiar logo is an orange circle containing a white tilted B with two strokes, adopted by the community rather than issued by a central authority.

What does a Bitcoin address look like?

A Bitcoin address is a long string of letters and numbers. Legacy addresses start with 1, script hash addresses start with 3, native SegWit addresses start with bc1q, and Taproot addresses start with bc1p. An example of the Bech32 shape, given in BIP 173 for illustration only, is bc1qw508d6qejxtdg4y5r3zarvary0c5xw7kv8f3t4. Real addresses should be copied, not typed by hand, and should be checked in full before use.

What does Bitcoin look like in a wallet?

In a wallet app, Bitcoin looks like a balance figure in BTC, sometimes beside a local currency reference, with a list of sent and received transactions, their dates, and their confirmation status. The receive screen shows an address and usually a QR code. The wallet does not contain coins. It manages keys and displays information calculated from the blockchain.

What does a Bitcoin transaction look like on a block explorer?

A transaction page shows a transaction identifier, the inputs being spent, the outputs created, the amounts in BTC, a fee, the block containing the transaction, and a confirmation count. An address page shows the total received, the total sent, and the full public transaction history for that address. These pages display the public record, not a private account statement.

Are the gold Bitcoin coins in photographs real?

In most cases, no. The gold coins in news photographs and advertisements are souvenir or prop coins made to illustrate a story. They contain no Bitcoin. The historical exception is the Casascius coin, whose loaded versions, produced between 2011 and 2013, carried a private key under a tamper evident hologram. Once that hologram was peeled, the piece no longer held Bitcoin in that form.

Can I buy a physical Bitcoin?

There is no official physical Bitcoin to buy. A person can buy a souvenir coin as an object, or a historical collector piece such as a Casascius coin, but the purchase of an object is not the same as acquiring a blockchain balance. Any offer that promises a physical coin containing Bitcoin should be checked carefully, because the claim depends on a valid, secret, and still funded private key, which a photograph cannot prove.

Why do different apps show Bitcoin differently?

Different wallets and explorers present the same underlying record in different layouts, with different units, decimal places, and local currency conversions. The blockchain record itself is in BTC, while the display may use BTC, smaller units such as satoshis, or a converted local currency figure for reference. Checking the unit label and the date of any screenshot prevents most misreadings.

How can I tell if a Bitcoin screenshot is fake?

A screenshot alone proves nothing. Check whether the address or transaction identifier can be found independently on a block explorer, and whether the amount, address, and confirmation status match the claim. Be cautious if the unit is unclear, the identifier is missing or blurred, or the image asks for a private key or seed phrase. No legitimate check requires sharing those secrets.

Is the orange Bitcoin logo official?

The orange circle logo is widely recognized and widely used, but it is a community adopted mark, not a logo issued by a central Bitcoin authority, because Bitcoin has no central issuer. Slight variations in color, tilt, and style are normal. The text symbol ₿ and the abbreviation BTC refer to the same asset, regardless of the particular logo artwork used.

Sources & references

• Bitcoin.org, FAQ, general section: Bitcoin described as a completely digital money, the blockchain described as a public ledger, and the wallet section stating that bitcoins exist as records on the blockchain and that a wallet holds the keys that control them: https://bitcoin.org/en/faq
• Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System, 2008, section on transactions defining an electronic coin as a chain of digital signatures: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
• Unicode Consortium, The Unicode Standard Version 10.0, chapter on currency symbols, listing U+20BF BITCOIN SIGN, released June 2017, as reported in the Unicode 10.0 announcement coverage: https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2017/06/20/you-can-now-type-the-bitcoin-b-symbol-in-unicode-text
• Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 173, Base32 address format for native SegWit outputs, Bech32 specification and main network example bc1qw508d6qejxtdg4y5r3zarvary0c5xw7kv8f3t4, as reproduced in the BIP 173 text: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0173.mediawiki
• BitcoinWiki, Casascius Physical Bitcoins, history section: loaded sales suspended 27 November 2013 after FinCEN treated the sale of preloaded tokens as money transmission, and the hologram and private key mechanism: https://bitcoinwiki.org/wiki/Casascius_physical_bitcoins
• CoinCodex, What Does Bitcoin Look Like, for the SERP comparison on physical representations as souvenirs without blockchain value, used only as a finding aid and not as a sole source for protocol claims: https://coincodex.com/article/35063/what-does-bitcoin-look-like/