Bitcoin whitepaper turns 13: the journey so far

Bitcoin (BTC) whitepaper’s 13th birthday has just begun as the world continues to grapple with a global pandemic, fears of inflation, incredible Memecoin trends, and increasing institutional acceptance.

On October 31, 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto published a whitepaper on Bitcoin for a cryptographic mailing list hosted by Metzdow. The Metzdow mailing list is run by a group of Cypherpunks and is full of ideas for creating some form of digital currency: some of them were even quoted in the Bitcoin whitepaper.

Satoshi’s whitepaper includes a message titled “Bitcoin P2P e-cash paper” in which Nakamoto states that its digital currency is fully peer-to-peer (P2P) and does not require a trusted third party for the transaction to take place. Through a peer-to-peer network, Bitcoin has solved the double spending problem. Bitcoin also enables network participants to remain anonymous and to secure them using a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus algorithm.

Back then, the whitepaper was not received in the way people would expect, who know what they know today. Only a handful of people looked at Nakamoto’s email and responded with their thoughts and concerns about Bitcoin.

Speaking to Cointelegraph, Leo Matchett, co-founder and CEO of Decentralized Pictures, a nonprofit that supports independent filmmakers, said the Bitcoin whitepaper is “the source of a new era of monetary sovereignty,” adding, “Satoshi continues to shoulder “. of giants and solve problems that their predecessors couldn’t. “

Matchett further stressed that the White Paper “really marks the beginning of a new era for the world’s monetary systems” because it “brings up the idea that decentralization is worth more than centralization”. In fact, Bitcoin’s idea tried to solve many problems including counterfeiting, ramps, and counterparty risk.

Run bitcoin

After the white paper was posted on the cryptographic mailing list, discussion about the document slowly but surely increased when the Bitcoin network was launched in early 2009. growing PGP Corporation. Encryption products.

Hal Finney is known in the crypto space for having participated in the first Bitcoin transaction and the first after Nakamoto that runs a copy of the network through a node. After setting up, Finney tweeted that he was “running Bitcoin”.

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Cypherpunk, who tragically died of ALS complications in 2014 and had his body chilled by the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, described his work with Satoshi in a forum post where he revealed that he had started using BTC on “Block 70-something “To dismantle. and after some correspondence, Satoshi sent him 10 BTC to check that the network was up.

At this point, no space was required on the blockchain, so the transaction was successfully processed with a fee of 0 BTC. 10 BTC was worthless at the time, but the transaction helped fix some of the bugs in BTC’s early days.

That first bitcoin transaction made it clear that the network was up and running, and while there is still a lot to be done to achieve it today, it was a first step in the right direction. A year later, in 2010, the first commercial Bitcoin transaction will take place.

$ 600 million + for two pizzas

On May 18, 2010, the developer Laszlo Hanyecz published a Bitcointalk forum post in which 10,000 Bitcoins were offered “for a few pizzas”. Hanyecz offers to pay another forum member the money if they can get him two large pizzas, maybe even his own.

The post was received with skepticism, as 10,000 BTC was not worth as much as two pizzas or even close to it. It wasn’t until May 22nd, after tracking, that Hanyecz reported that he “successfully exchanged 10,000 bitcoins for pizza”.

Back then, despite Bitcoin’s low value and small community, one user noted that “an important milestone has been reached.” This day is now known in the crypto community as “Bitcoin Pizza Day”.

The first commercial Bitcoin transaction resulted in the creation of an ecosystem worth over $ 2 trillion and demonstrated that Bitcoin has a number of use cases that need to be considered. For the first time, Bitcoin is used as a real medium of exchange.

An industry worth trillions of dollars

The price of the cryptocurrency will rise over time, partly because of its acceptance and partly because speculators want to take advantage of its incredible volatility. In the midst of it all, new companies have emerged and have become an important asset class.

Speaking to Cointelegraph, Miha Grčar, global head of business development at Kraken crypto exchange, said: “Nobody could have predicted the tidal wave that would result from the publication of a 9-page PDF document.

The Bitcoin whitepaper, Grčar said, set out the vision of a digital currency that could be used as an independent store of value and medium of exchange with centralized control. According to him, his potential has yet to be fully developed:

“It turned out to be a breakthrough of such historical importance and magnitude that we could barely scratch the surface even after thirteen years.”

Bitcoin, he said, “instigated a paradigm shift that is now the foundation of a trillion-dollar industry,” showing the world that there is a better way where “sovereignty, financial and individual freedoms are outside the clutches of corrupt antiquated societies coexist”. -Economic systems with insiders, confidants and bedroom deals. “

As can be seen from the first commercial Bitcoin transaction, the value of BTC is not always clear. The cryptocurrency has experienced significant crashes in its history and has been declared “dead” more than 400 times by the media and analysts.

Bitcoin’s market cap is now over $ 1.16 trillion, according to Cointelegraph Markets Pro. While most of them wish they heard about cryptocurrency in 2010 or 2011 in order to invest in it and build wealth through that investment, they most likely cannot see BTC.

In May 2011, early Bitcoin investor Greg Schoen posted a famous tweet expressing his regret over selling 1,700 BTC for $ 0.30 after receiving it when the money came in. electronic is trading at $ 0.06 as it could have sold its coins for $ 8 each. With one BTC currently trading over $ 61,000, its 1,700 BTC would now be worth over $ 104 million. It is a shame indeed.

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The rise of Bitcoin was aided by a thriving industry full of innovation, with cryptocurrency exchanges starting trading on the Nasdaq exchange, and institutional investors, with institutions realizing that BTC can be used to diversify their portfolios and hedge against inflation.

Earlier this year, El Salvador became the first country in the world to accept Bitcoin as legal tender, with the country’s Bitcoin law officially going into effect on September 7th. El Salvadorans can use electronic money through a government-issued wallet called a chivo. Lightning Network, a Layer 2 scaling solution.

Speaking to Cointelegraph, Javier Moro, Product Manager at the Latin American crypto exchange Bitso, noted that El Salvador’s move was “rooted in the hope of a better future for El Salvador” and its success in spreading crypto-related knowledge within the country.

More is yet to come

The first Bitcoin Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) was launched in the USA at the beginning of October. The ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF has started trading under the ticker BITO on the New York Stock Exchange. It became the second most traded fund on record at the time of launch.

In a statement sent to Cointelegraph, Ron Levy, CEO and co-founder of blockchain consulting firm The Crypto Company, stated that the Bitcoin whitepaper “lays the foundation for what will become an industry” decentralized business beyond what people for keep possible. ”

The next leap forward in this area, he said, would be “clear laws and regulations about what can and cannot be done with cryptocurrencies.” However, it is obviously not clear how this can be done as all new technological breakthroughs face resistance from established mechanisms.

Brittany Laughlin, executive director of the Stacks Foundation, which bridges decentralized finance (DeFi) and the Bitcoin network, told Cointelegraph that Bitcoin is far from being just a store of value as “now smart contracts are built on it can”. Bitcoin welcoming millions of BTC holders to the world of DeFi, NFT and True Ownership. “

In particular, Satoshi Nakamoto appears to have predicted that additional blockchains could use tokens, which they then called “domain objects”, to represent ownership of assets. Satoshi’s example is a token that represents domain ownership for one year.

Finney: “Satoshi, do you advocate the idea that each additional blockchain creates its own type of coins that are traded for Bitcoin on the exchanges?”

Satoshi: “Yes … the opponents …

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