the creation of Bitcoin
Bitcoin was born in response to the need for a decentralized financial system, resistant to censorship and without intermediaries. Here are the key milestones:
🧩 Ideological origins
Inspired by movements like the Cypherpunks, who advocated for digital privacy and financial sovereignty.
Based on previous ideas like b-money (Wei Dai), Bit Gold (Nick Szabo), and Hashcash (Adam Back), which explored digital money and proof of work.
📜 Official birth
October 31, 2008: Satoshi Nakamoto publishes the whitepaper “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”.
January 3, 2009: The genesis block is mined, starting the Bitcoin network. It includes the message:
“The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks”, as a critique of the banking system.
⚙️ Key innovations
Blockchain: Public and immutable record of transactions.
Proof of Work (PoW): Consensus mechanism that secures the network.
Limited supply: Only 21 million BTC will ever exist.
🧑💻 Early participants
Hal Finney: Received the first BTC transaction.
Satoshi disappears in 2010, leaving development to the community.
Bitcoin was not the first attempt at digital money, but it was the first to solve the double-spending problem without the need for a central authority.