Did you know "Crypto" and "NFT" existed long before Web3 but meant something totally different?

"Crypto" has been around for centuries. As early as the 1600s, it was used in words like cryptography (the art of writing or solving codes), and later in the 1900s in terms like crypto-communist or crypto-religious. Used to describe people who secretly held certain beliefs.

"NFT" wasn't always about JPEG or digital ownership. In the 1960s to 1980s, it showed up in books and publications as acronyms like National Film Theatre (UK cinema institution) or Nuclear Fuel Transport (used in energy sector discussions).

Even "Web3" popped up early, used when people talked about internet evolution (Web 1.0 → 2.0 → 3.0) way before @gavofyork redefined it in 2014.

But what about "Bitcoin"?

Complete silence until 2009, when Satoshi dropped the whitepaper online and "Bitcoin" was born.

Like most of us in crypto, I always thought Bitcoin kicked off everything—crypto, NFTs, Web3. But I discovered something pretty wild using Google Books Ngram Viewer:

Bitcoin is actually the youngest word of them all.

It arrived last but it changed everything.