Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, a digital asset designed to function as a means of exchange that uses cryptography to control its creation and management instead of relying on central authorities.1 Protected by the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, its creator integrated many existing ideas of the cypherpunk community when launching the Bitcoin network and its corresponding native currencies, the bitcoins.
Before the launch of Bitcoin there were already some digital cash technologies with a centralized sender based on the ecash protocols of David Chaum2 and Stefan Brands. Adam Back had developed hashcash, a working test system for spam control. The first proposals for the creation of digital shortages based on cryptocurrencies appeared with the b-money of Wei Dai3 and the gold bit of Nick Szabo.4 5 Hal Finney developed reusable work tests (RPOW) using hashcash as a test algorithm of work.6
The bit gold proposal defined a mechanism for controlling inflation based on the market. In turn, Nick Szabo also devoted himself to researching other areas that allowed reaching that goal, such as a register of Byzantine-fault-tolerant assets for storing and transferring chained solutions from work tests.5
There has been much speculation about the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto with candidates that include Wei Dai, Hal Finney and their subsequent denials.7 8 It has also been pointed out that Satoshi Nakamoto is a group of computer technicians from the European financial sector. 9
In November 2008, an article was registered in a cryptography distribution list10 signed with the name Satoshi Nakamoto and titled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer electronic cash system. This document details how to use a peer-to-peer network to create "a system for electronic transactions that does not depend on trust" .11 12 13 14 On January 4, 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto records the first block (known as the block of genesis), thus creating the Bitcoin network and the emission of the first bitcoins, as well as the launch of the first Open Source Bitcoin client.12 15 16 17
Programmer Hal Finney was one of the first people to adopt, support and contribute to Bitcoin. Finney downloaded the Bitcoin software on the day it was launched, and received 10 bitcoins from Nakamoto in the first bitcoin transaction in the world.18 19 Other first were Wei Dai, creator of b-money, and Nick Szabo, creator of bit gold, both predecessors of Bitcoin.20