Pre-history of Bitcoin

Prior to the release of bitcoin there were a number of digital cash technologies starting with the issuer based ecash protocols of David Chaum and Stefan Brands. Adam Back developed hashcash, a proof-of-work scheme for spam control. The first proposals for distributed digital scarcity based cryptocurrencies were Wei Dai's b-money and Nick Szabo's bit gold. Hal Finney developed reusable proof of work (RPOW) using hashcash as its proof of work algorithm.

In the bit gold proposal which proposed a collectible market based mechanism for inflation control, Nick Szabo also investigated some additional enabling aspects including a Byzantine fault-tolerant asset registry to store and transfer the chained proof-of-work solutions.

There has been much speculation as to the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto with suspects including Dai, Szabo, and Finney – and accompanying denials. The possibility that Satoshi Nakamoto was a computer collective in the European financial sector has also been discussed.

Bitcoin is the brainchild of Satoshi Nakamoto, who published a white paper on the invention on October 31, 2008, namely “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”, describing what Bitcoin is. It was on January 2009 when Version 0.1 of Bitcoin was released. And, soon, Satoshi and Hal Finney, a cryptographic activist, transacted in bitcoins.

During October 2009, an exchange rate for the bitcoin was established, which was US$1 = 1,309.03 BTC. This rate was decided after framing up an equation as to how much is the cost of the electricity to run a computer, generating bitcoins.

BITCOIN’S JOURNEY INTO THE FINANCIAL MAINSTREAM HAS ALREADY BEGUN

In terms of worth, Bitcoin’s come a long way from its early days. Who would have thought that from US$1 = 1,309.03 BTC in 2009, the worth of internet’s favorite currency would shoot past US$2,900 in June 2017? The History of Bitcoin is not an easy one, and the infographic below will help you get an understanding of where it all began.