How Bitcoin Works

When you deposit money into your bank account, your bank maintains a record of that deposit on its ledger. That’s a centralized ledger, meaning it’s controlled by a single entity. 

By contrast, the blockchain that Satoshi built is a decentralized ledger. It is distributed across tens of thousands of computers around the world. Every computer on the Bitcoin network is called a node. Each node holds the data. As a result, no company, government, or individual (including Satoshi) controls the network.