Officially, Bitcoin started in 2009 by a mystery man (or group) with the Japanese name of Satoshi Nakomoto. His name has the same commonality as John Smith has in the U.S. In short, we do not know who started Bitcoin. He kept his identity secret for an important reason.
The domain name, Bitcoin.org was created in 2008 in Helsinki from whois.org. One common theory is that three programmers skilled in cryptography - none of them Japanese - developed the system. The men behind one of the relevant patents #20100042841 are Neal King, Vladimir Oksman, and Charles Bry. All three have filed several related patents in the encryption, and network management area.
A fantastic article making a strong case for the three man origin of Bitcoin appeared on Fastcompany.com
Unsurprisingly, all three potential inventors strongly deny they are involved at all.
The Atlantic Wire has tagged a British coder named Michael Clear as the brain behind Bitcoin. He too denies it.
With nobody pinned as the founder of Bitcoin, this anonymity becomes one of its great strengths. There is no founder to throw in jail. There is no central Bitcoin bank to shut down. There is no one man, woman, or group controlling Bitcoin.
Bitcoins come from a distributed network of people running what are called Bitcoin miners. We will be discussing Bitcoin mining later on in this book. Having a central processing or controlling location for a currency presents a big problem. Governments, hackers, banks, or general criminals can all attack and often destroy that central authority.
Governments go after alternative currencies. A successful precious metal backed electronic currency called e-gold stirred the ire of government. The founder and head, Dr. Douglas Jackson, was nearly sent to prison for 20+ years.
Several ideas for currencies similar to Bitcoin have come and gone. Around 1994, Digicash was an early attempt at a central, online, digital currency using code-breaking math. Peppercoin was another code-based version of digital currency a bit later, but it also failed.
What these early attempts lacked was a way of spreading out the ability to generate the currency. As in the real world, we could all choose to go search for gold or silver. Some of us may even find a bit of precious metals. A few of us, very few, will find a mother lode. That describes what Bitcoin has offered.
The reason Satoshi Nakomoto is so brilliant, is that he discovered the secret to getting his idea adopted widely. Satoshi made several clever moves:
If we move quickly, we can even acquire quite a lot of Bitcoin pie. Already, there are Bitcoin multi-millionaires. After reading this book, chances are many more will join those wealthy ranks. Bitcoin is still just beginning.
The domain name, Bitcoin.org was created in 2008 in Helsinki from whois.org. One common theory is that three programmers skilled in cryptography - none of them Japanese - developed the system. The men behind one of the relevant patents #20100042841 are Neal King, Vladimir Oksman, and Charles Bry. All three have filed several related patents in the encryption, and network management area.
A fantastic article making a strong case for the three man origin of Bitcoin appeared on Fastcompany.com
Unsurprisingly, all three potential inventors strongly deny they are involved at all.
The Atlantic Wire has tagged a British coder named Michael Clear as the brain behind Bitcoin. He too denies it.
With nobody pinned as the founder of Bitcoin, this anonymity becomes one of its great strengths. There is no founder to throw in jail. There is no central Bitcoin bank to shut down. There is no one man, woman, or group controlling Bitcoin.
Bitcoins come from a distributed network of people running what are called Bitcoin miners. We will be discussing Bitcoin mining later on in this book. Having a central processing or controlling location for a currency presents a big problem. Governments, hackers, banks, or general criminals can all attack and often destroy that central authority.
Governments go after alternative currencies. A successful precious metal backed electronic currency called e-gold stirred the ire of government. The founder and head, Dr. Douglas Jackson, was nearly sent to prison for 20+ years.
Several ideas for currencies similar to Bitcoin have come and gone. Around 1994, Digicash was an early attempt at a central, online, digital currency using code-breaking math. Peppercoin was another code-based version of digital currency a bit later, but it also failed.
What these early attempts lacked was a way of spreading out the ability to generate the currency. As in the real world, we could all choose to go search for gold or silver. Some of us may even find a bit of precious metals. A few of us, very few, will find a mother lode. That describes what Bitcoin has offered.
The reason Satoshi Nakomoto is so brilliant, is that he discovered the secret to getting his idea adopted widely. Satoshi made several clever moves:
- Give everyone a piece of the pie by giving away the software to create more Bitcoins. This is Bitcoin mining.
- Have no central authority, or founder, that controls the currency.
- Make it operate like cash with irreversible transactions.
- Keep the whole system honest and transparent. Everyone has a record of all the Bitcoins, or what is known as the ledger.
If we move quickly, we can even acquire quite a lot of Bitcoin pie. Already, there are Bitcoin multi-millionaires. After reading this book, chances are many more will join those wealthy ranks. Bitcoin is still just beginning.
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