Bitcoin and the blockchain
A pseudonymous paper proposes money without a trusted third party.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 64 days
- Era
- Contemporary, Holocene
Satoshi Nakamoto publishes the Bitcoin paper in October 2008, weeks after Lehman's collapse, solving the double-spending problem through a proof-of-work chain that makes rewriting history computationally expensive. Whether it succeeds as money is contested — it functions mainly as a speculative asset — and its energy consumption rivals that of medium-sized countries. Its identity remains unknown.