Blockchain technology is the backbone that underpins cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. It is a decentralized ledger of transactions shared across a peer-to-peer network, allowing participants to confirm transactions without a central authority. Blockchain provides a secure way to store transaction information that makes it difficult to hack. Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency built upon this blockchain technology, with new bitcoins "mined" by solving complex math problems that verify transactions and add them to the distributed ledger.