Bitcoin: How the Internet Created Its Own Currency

Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer decentralized digital currency. It differs from traditional, government-backed currencies in that there is no central issuer, and there are no middlemen involved for various transactions.

Back in 1998, the concept of crypto-currency was described by Wei Dai on a cypherpunks mailing list. Crypto-currency is an electronic currency that relies on cryptography to regulate functions such as value and counterfeit protection. Bitcoin is the first implementation of that idea. Its protocol was published in a white paper by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. In 2009, Nakamoto released the first Bitcoin client and issued the first Bitcoins.

The supply of Bitcoin is regula…
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