$BTC Bitcoin's foundational principles and technical design were first published in a whitepaper titled "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System" on October 31, 2008. This seminal document was authored by an anonymous entity or group known as Satoshi Nakamoto and distributed via a cryptography mailing list.

The whitepaper outlined a decentralized digital currency system that enables peer-to-peer transactions without the need for intermediaries like banks. It detailed the core mechanisms of Bitcoin, including the blockchain, a public and immutable ledger of all transactions, and the proof-of-work consensus mechanism, which involves a process called mining. Miners use computational power to solve complex cryptographic puzzles to validate transactions and add new blocks to the blockchain. In return for their efforts, they are rewarded with newly minted bitcoins and transaction fees. This process is how new BTC is "published" into the network, incentivizing participation and securing the system.