Home / Markets News & Opinions / Happy Birthday Bitcoin!

Happy Birthday Bitcoin!

Last Updated April 3, 2023 7:06 AM
Giulio Prisco
Last Updated April 3, 2023 7:06 AM

a man with a question mark on his faceSix years ago on October 31, 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious inventor of Bitcoin, announced the concurrency  on the Cryptography mailing list.

A lot of water has passed under the bridges since then. In 2014, six years after Bitcoin was unleashed onto the world, a book, “Bitcoin and the Future of Money” and a film “The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin” tell the awesome story of Bitcoin. The identity of Satoshi Nakamoto is still unknown, but his place in history is assured, and his original Bitcoin paper “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” is a must read for all Bitcoin enthusiasts.

The paper is, alas, not easy to read, and therefore we praise the initiative of Eli Parra, who produced a poster summary  of Satoshi’s original Bitcoin whitepaper, on occasion of the 6th anniversary of its publication.

a paper with a bunch of diagrams on it

This Elegant Decentralized Network Has Kept Working Almost Uninterruptedly For Years

“All diagrams are from the original paper (and every diagram in the paper appears in the poster). All text too comes from the original paper, only occasionally tweaked to make it standalone. Emphases mine.”

RelatedNews

“Rereading the paper after a long time & study, a lot of the crypto details have become clear, even obvious. But I’m still mystified & stunned that this elegant decentralized network has kept working almost uninterruptedly after so many years and so much exposure.”

Parra emphasizes a key passage of Satoshi’s paper:

“The network is robust in its unstructured simplicity. Nodes work all at once with little coordination. They do not need to be identified, since messages are not routed to any particular place and only need to be delivered on a best effort basis. Any needed rules and incentives can be enforced with this consensus mechanism.”

The Internet legend that Satoshi Nakamoto was a time traveler  from the future is, of course, not to be taken too seriously, but its popularity emphasizes the extreme, “otherworldly” elegance and efficiency of his approach.

What are your thoughts on the 6th birthday of Bitcoin? Comment below!

Images from Eli Parra and Shutterstock.