Bitcoin was came to life in November 1st, 2008 with an email from Satoshi Nakamoto to the [email protected]
I’ve been working on a new electronic cash system that’s fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party.
The paper is available at:http://www.bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
The main properties:
- Double-spending is prevented with a peer-to-peer network.
- No mint or other trusted parties.
- Participants can be anonymous.
- New coins are made from Hashcash style proof-of-work.
- The proof-of-work for new coin generation also powers the network to prevent double spending.
The mail Satoshi sent also included “You will not find a solution to political problems in cryptography. Yes, but we can win a major battle in the arms race and gain a new territory of freedom for several years. Governments are good at cutting off the heads of a centrally controlled networks like Napster, but pure P2P networks like Gnutella and Tor seem to be holding their own. ”
-Satoshi
His name has the same commonality as John Smith has in the U.S. In short, nobody knows anything about who started Bitcoin. He kept his identity secret for an important reason avoiding death.
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 most relevant patents #20100042841 are Neal King, Vladimir Oksman, and Charles Bry. All three of them filed several related patents in the encryption, and network management area.
A wonderful article making a strong case for the three man origin of Bitcoin appeared on Fastcompany.com (http://www.fastcompany.com/1785445/Bitcoin-crypto-currency-mystery-reopened)
It’s ano brainer that 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. (http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2011/10/race-unmask-Bitcoins-inventors/43535/)
With nobody claiming to be 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 different nodes and what are called Bitcoin miners.
Having a central authority or controlled by few people 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 as seen previously in history. 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.
It is not the first time, Bitcoin like concept has emerged in this world. Several ideas for currencies similar to Bitcoin have come and gone. Around 1994, Digicash was an early attempt at a central, online, digital currency.
Bitcoin is still just beginning.
“So you think money is the root of all evil? Have you ever asked what is the root of all money?”
Ayn Rand”
