Mastering Blockchain - Second Edition

Bitcoin

In 2008, Bitcoin was introduced through a paper called, Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.

This paper is available at https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf.

It was written by Satoshi Nakamoto, which is believed to be a pseudonym, as the true identity of Bitcoin inventor is unknown and subject of much speculation. The first key idea introduced in the paper was of a purely peer-to-peer electronic cash that does need an intermediary bank to transfer payments between peers.

Bitcoin is built on decades of cryptographic research such as the research in Merkle trees, hash functions, public key cryptography, and digital signatures. Moreover, ideas such as BitGold, B-money, hashcash, and cryptographic time stamping provided the foundations ...