Bitcoin white paper by an anonymous person under the alias Satoshi Nakamoto turns 13 today! Since its publishing on October 31, 2008, the document has caused a lot of disruption in the crypto industry.
Its author is still not known to this day. This document marked the revolutionary birth of cryptocurrency, particularly Bitcoin, which has taken the world by storm. Since its launch, BTC has had a gradual 7,749,999.900% increase. The cryptocurrency is currently trading at a stable value of above $60k.
Ahead of the 13th anniversary, prominent Twitter crypto entrepreneur Anthony Pompliano tweeted,
“Tomorrow is the 13 year anniversary of the Bitcoin Whitepaper.”
What Exactly Is the Bitcoin White Paper?
The Bitcoin white paper is titled ‘Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.’ Satoshi created the nine-page document to explain what BTC is, giving readers an insight into the reason for its creation and what the developers aimed to achieve.
Bitcoin was created as a solution to the Global Financial Crisis. Its developers sought to provide a supply-capped, fully incorruptible, and decentralized monetary system.
The white paper proposes a solution to double-spending without the risk of trusting a third party. Double-spending would be avoided by verifying every transaction in the blockchain by programs run by nodes that synchronize the blockchain.
Satoshi’s proposed completely removing the centralized third-party system. An electronic cash system would eliminate the need for hard cash. As a result, the customer would not need to go to the bank to complete any transaction since they would be their own bank.
This, of course, was threatening for traditional financial institutions, which were slow to adapt BTC. Currently, however, more and more financial institutions are offering crypto services to their customers.
A Backstory on the Bitcoin White Paper
Satoshi Nakamoto, who presented the white paper to the Cryptography Mailing List, is Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator. Satoshi had, in fact, already written Bitcoin’s code before sharing the document.
Nakamoto presented the Bitcoin white paper just two months prior to the mining of the first BTC block. A month before the release of this document, Nakamoto had already registered the domain Bitcoin.org.
The document met a lot of skepticism following its release. Bitcoin’s first supporter, Hal Finney, was one of the few, if not the only one who saw the vision. Finney referred to the then very new and crazy idea as “a very promising idea.” The cryptocurrency’s website launched on January 3, 2009.
The cryptocurrency was available for trading and purchase in July 2010. At the time, one BTC was worth $0.0008. The cryptocurrency had not gained a lot of exposure at the time. Consequentially, it was only being available to a few individuals.
Thirteen years later, millions of people around the world are using Bitcoin even with a country adopting it as legal tender. The cryptocurrency is currently a permanent topic on Wall Street.
Entrepreneur Anthony Pompliano voiced the thought many of us have after tweeting,
“Satoshi Nakamoto should win the Nobel Peace Prize and the Nobel Prize for Economics. They would be the first pseudonymous person or group to do so.”
Bitcoin has grown exponentially and has received support from prominent people over the years. One very vocal BTC supporter is Elon Musk, Tesla CEO and one of the world’s richest men. His support, mainly in the form of tweets, has had a considerable impact on the market value of cryptocurrencies.
At the time of writing, BTC is worth $60,607.54, a drop from its all-time price of $66,909.15.
