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Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System Alive

Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System
KindPaper
Published2008
StatusAlive
AuthorsSatoshi Nakamoto
FieldCryptography
Sourcebitcoin.org ↗

Nine pages, pseudonymous author, one working idea: proof-of-work consensus solving double-spending without a trusted party. Whether money or monument, it launched an industry.

Created by Satoshi Nakamoto

Posted to the metzdowd.com cryptography list on October 31, 2008, the paper proposed electronic cash without a trusted third party: a proof-of-work blockchain timestamping transactions into a history too costly to rewrite, with incentives making honest mining pay better than attack.

Nakamoto released the software in January 2009 and vanished in 2010, leaving the system running. Whether Bitcoin is sound money is still debated; that it solved Byzantine consensus in open networks is not — the longest chain of the last fifteen years proves the mechanism works.

Sources

  1. bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
  2. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin
  3. ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/training/annual-national-training-seminar/2018/Emerging_Tech_Bitcoin_Crypto.pdf