Category: Crypto History

November 13, 2010 – ETF.com reported a new Bitcoin ATM opening in Vancouver Canada. The government of the United States passed a bill on October 29 that barred financial institutions that traded with Iran from participating in an exchange-traded fund that would track the price of Bitcoin.

The bill was passed in a vacuum and without any real debate because the Senate was completely occupied with the debate over the health-care bill.

Months before this point, Congressman Louis Frost of Oklahoma introduced a bill in Congress to establish a national commission to examine the economic and financial implications of cryptocurrencies.

The digital world has been a serious influence on humans since the beginning of human civilization. It was through human endeavor that we were able to discover our existence on the planet; although humans have been instrumental in expanding their own knowledge, through the design of tools and vehicles, the invention of our current way of life came through the efforts of other beings.

These beings, through understanding of the concept of money, became the creators of the first monetary based economy which has impacted us all. Whether as a response to technological advancement, or a reaction to lack of resources or something more, the world has been occupied with the concept of money for thousands of years.
This is a book about the history of cryptocurrency, a description of the technology that allows individuals to transact with each other from person to person, and also transfer value between the things they own, with the aim of being built and maintained by the users themselves.

Basic Concepts.
The history of cryptocurrency began in the mid-eighteenth century when it was first proposed by Scottish economist Robert Morris that the country form a central bank to maintain the volume of money in circulation. This led to the creation of the Bank of England in 1694, which was the first central bank in the world.

The purpose of cryptocurrencies is to provide a mechanism for recording and exchanging financial information as efficiently and inexpensively as possible. Some cryptocurrencies use a public ledger system, such as bitcoin, that relies on a distributed network to process transactions. The distributed nature of the blockchain system renders censorship and fraud almost impossible.

The History of Bitcoin.
The first bitcoin block was created in the year 2009 and is commonly referred to as the genesis block. This block has the headline of the New York Times on it, and is what all other blocks look to for direction.

As part of his research into Privacy-Preserving Computation, David Chaum developed a concept for a public-key encryption algorithm that could be used for secure communications. David Chaum wanted to create a primitive that would offer a level of security that would be similar to the way we now use public key cryptography for secure email and storage. With the advent of the Internet, people began using passwords as their first form of digital signature.

Because these passwords were stored in plaintext, they were easily stolen and could be used to access other accounts. David Chaum realized that with electronic money, we could create a more secure digital currency. His solution was called blind signature.

Szabo’s idea was similar to Chaum’s: a distributed network of volunteer computers that would offer a system for anonymous, secure, and self-sustaining digital currency. The idea was to implement a peer-to-peer electronic cash system, with no central authority that could grant or deny transactions. In May 1998, Nick Szabo’s first implementation of the concept for a decentralized electronic cash system was ready. This implementation required network participants to solve a complicated cryptographic puzzle, and all those that solved the puzzle would be awarded reward. The puzzle was called Bit Gold, and its cryptographic solution would become the foundation of all cryptocurrencies.

Bitcoin’s network is a public ledger of all transactions that have ever been made on the network. This ledger is called the Blockchain, which in combination with the public key encryption algorithm, provide anonymity and security to transactions. All transactions are recorded in a public and immutable database, called the blockchain, and each transaction takes a very small amount of time. All the data needed to verify a transaction is recorded on the blockchain: the public keys of the two participants involved in the transaction, the time when the transaction was made, and the amount of transaction.

Bitcoin is the first, and so far, the only successful implementation of an anonymous digital currency. Other cryptocurrencies are in their early stages of development, with the most important development being blockchain technology. The history of cryptocurrency can be told as the rise of blockchain technology. The blockchain is an encrypted, distributed, public database.
In 2006 a developer called Amir Taaki published a white paper called Dark Lightning. He published his solution to the double.