2008-10-31
Satoshi Nakamoto publishes nine pages that specify peer-to-peer electronic cash.
On 31 October 2008 — six weeks after Lehman Brothers collapsed — someone using the name Satoshi Nakamoto posted “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” to a cryptography mailing list. Nine pages described how proof-of-work, economic incentives and a chain of blocks could let strangers agree on a ledger with no trusted party, solving the double-spend problem that had defeated every earlier digital cash.
The timing was not subtle and neither was the reception: mostly skepticism from the few who read it. The paper remains the canonical starting text, unchanged, and shorter than most terms of service.
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