In October 2008, an unknown cryptographer and programmer using the name Satoshi Nakamoto published a paper called Bitcoin: A Peer-toPeer Electronic Cash System. A few months later, in January 2009, Nakamoto created the first block - the 'genesis block' - of Bitcoin, on which he overlaid a headline from that day's Times - 'Chancellor on Brink of Second Bailout of Banks'.
The Bitcoin white paper was the accumulation years of work on Nakamoto's part, but with assistance from an online community of cryptographers. Its achievement was to solve the 'double-spend' problem using a new system of verifiable, public transactions. Finally, an Internet of money had been created and could be safely used. It remains un-hacked.
Bitcoin is the first crypto-currency and the ideas in that paper have given rise to a block-chain revolution that is, by most accounts, just getting started. The current value of the crypto-currency market is in the trillions.
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Category: | Economics |
ISBN: | 9781802795486 |
Publisher: | Welbeck Publishing Group |
On sale: | February 2023 |
Format: | Paperback |
eBook ISBN |