There is much to learn from cryptography to blockchain and to the emergence of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
In the early days of 19th Century, cryptography was mostly used in secret by the military agencies. As science and technology began to move on, thing changed when the notion was later made public by the United State government’s publication, Data Encryption Standard. When the first work on public key cryptography which brought about new order in Cryptography, became publicly available.
In 1990s, A cypherpunks’ group is founded in San Francisco. The name was derived from the words ‘cypher’ and cyberpunk’ around the same time. The cypherpunks mailing list is formed and a little while later, Eric Hughes published “A cypherpunks Manifesto”.
Thereafter, around 1980s, A paper called Security without Identification” by Dr David Chaum is released, covering topics like anonymous digital cash and pseudonymous reputation systems. Over the next decade, all these new ideas turned into a massive movement.
The creation of Cypherpunk money is a major event in the 2000s. 2004 sees Hal Finney’s Reusable Proof of Work (RPOW) and in 2005, Nick Szabo publishes a proposal for “Bit gold” which built upon Finney’s RPOW.
On 18th of August 2008, an anonymous person registers the domain Bitcoin.org. Thereafter 31st, October, a paper called “A peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” was published under the pseudonym ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’ and posted to a cryptography mailing list. The paper explained how Bitcoin would operate.
3rd of January, 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto released the ‘Genesis Block’ which is the first block of the Bitcoin blockchain onto the internet space. Later on the 12th of the same January, the first Bitcoin transaction takes place between Satoshi Nakamoto and Hal Finney, an early contributor.
6th Febuary, the first Bitcoin exchanger emerged called ‘DWDOLLAR’ launched. This exchange did not last for long, it ended in short while, probably as few people were aware of Bitcoin at the time.
Later in 22nd of May, 2010, Laszlo Hanyecz from Florida pays another man in London 10,000 Bitcoin for a pizza. This has become one of the unofficial Bitcoin holidays known as Bitcoin Pizza day”. Celebrating the first real-world purchase using Bitcoin. Today. That pizza she bought with 10,000 pieces of Bitcoin, that quantity of Bitcoin now worth $80,000, 000.
In July, the Bitcoin price increases X10 from the starting price increases ten-fold from 0.008 US Dollars to 0.008 Dollars per Bitcoin.
January, 2011, there was 25% which 5.25M BTC of all Bitcoin that will ever exist. Had been mined. By febuary, Bitcoin increases to $1 per Bitcoin. In May Bitcoin witnessed the first recorded apartment made available for rent with Bitcoin. The Bitcoin later reach another high in june of the same year with $31.91/Bitcoin. That same month on 12th of June, Bitcoin price clamp dwon to $10.25 USD. That was the first ever dropped in price of Bitcoin. Some believed that it will cease to exist as some people still believe till today will all they have seen. Wikileaks starts accepting anonymous Bitcoin donations in that same month of June, 2011. On 20th of August, 2011, the first Bitcoin Conference was held in the city of New York.
2012 witnesslittle development. The bitcoin Foundation launched, with the goal of overseeing the development of Bitcoin. MInners dropped from 50BTC to 25 BTC per block.
2013 is another year of Bitcoin, when Bloomberg implements a Bitcoin price ticker so that they will be able to track the Bitcoin price mainstream finance seems seem to be developing interest in Bitcoin. Later in Germany, The German Ministry of Finance announced Bitcoin as a Unit of account.
In this same month another shocking incident occurred, as Silk Road was shut down by the FBI which caused the decreases of BTC price from $139 to fall to $109.76 USD in few hours not even up to 24 hours.
November, Bitcoin started attracting the attention of education sector and institutions like the University of Nicosia in Cyprus announces that it will begin accepting Bitcoin as a means of paying tuition fee. They are the first Institution to announce that. It does not stop there. Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic begins accepting Bitcoin for travel by air as a means of purchasing tickets.
Later in 2014, Bitcoin crashed which cause MtGox to suspend Bicoin trading until the end of March. During that period the value of BTC declined. That same year in march Newsweek published an artcle claiming that they have identify the identity of BTC creator, which was disregarded by the public. In April, MtGOx began liquidaton proceedings.
All these development got the attention of the several government like the White House. The New York State Department of Financial Services issues a BitLincense proposal a rule to regulate didgital currency businesses that serves customers in the state.
The most interesting part is that PayPal begins to allow its merchants to accept Bitcoin payments, and also Microsoft was not left out of these as it allows Bitcoin payment for the purchase of its products. Later in June The New York State later released the proposed BitLincense for business using BTC for their goods and servies. All these developments pushes Bitcoin to the frontpage of the Economist.
Sweet news in the month of Febuary, 2016 as the European Court of justice rules that the exchange of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are not subjected to Value Added Tax (VAT) in EU. The point was to classify Bitcoin crypto as currencies instead of property or goods.
One day is for the thief and one is for the owner, the former secret service agent, known as SHuan Bridges, who stole $800 000 USD in Bitcoin from the Silk Road website was arrested.
Later in febuary, a public statement was released by a group of influential memebers of the Bitcoin community proposing their support for the new segregated Witness functionabilty that would allow for the hard fork that would increase the block size limit by july 2016.
Now, let me start talking about this year 2017, Bitcoin has been dropping joy in lot of family this year, what we are witnessing still seems to be a dream in some people’s eyes. Bitcoin price hits $1000 in 2nd of January for the first time in 3 years. In 11th of June BTC price rose up to another high of $3000 mark.
1st of August Bitcoin splits into Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash (BCH). Later on 3rd of August, Segregated Witness(Segwit) soft fork activates on the Bitcoin network.As bitcoin’s biggest protocol upgrade to date. This introduces a whole new data structure that is more concretely that means Bitcoin’s block size limit was replaced by a block weight limit which allows for blocks up to 4 megabytes in size.
September is another joyful month, the price of BTC hit historic milestone of $5000, and it does not stop, in October it increased to $6000 now we are in November it has increased to $11,000.
I think in the next 5 years bitcoin may reach another milestone of $100,000. The future of Bitcoin will be very exciting. My advice is store as much altcoin including BTC as they will be growing together.
Thanks for reading.
