It's a very popular virtual currency that is rather difficult to track and cannot be taxed by governments due to it not releasing that kind of information. For reference, a decade ago $5 USD worth of bitcoins would be around $20,000 USD.
Bitcoin is a giant financial ledger. It's essentially a table of how many bitcoins there are who owns them and who has used them. In order to own a Bitcoin you just need a private key which is a string of letters and numbers, it will allow you to transfer the bitcoins attached to that key wherever. My private key is written down and stored in a safe. If I die my heirs only need to create a Bitcoin "wallet" however they choose (such as a web site that has them) and type that key in. They will then have control of all the Bitcoin I own.
Oh, and @sir_spiderman, Bitcoin isn't 10 years old but if you had $5 worth of it from when it was first ever spent on something tangible it would be worth $9.5mil right now.
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