content: They get it by "mining" (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining)), which now practically requires specialized ASICs to be profitable. Think of it like trading computing power (costs electricity) to crack a password. Once you "win" you get bitcoins as a reward. So yes, they earned it by using their computing power and electricity.    You used to be able to profitably mine using consumer CPUs and then GPUs, and people that did that and held onto their bitcoins now have a lot of money.