Intro to blockchainThe Bitcoin white paper appeared on The Cryptography Mailing list on 31 October, 2008. The email was sent by one “Satoshi Nakamoto” and said:
I've been working on a new electronic cash system that's fully
peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party.
The paper is available at:
http://www.bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
The main properties:
Double-spending is prevented with a peer-to-peer network.
No mint or other trusted parties.
Participants can be anonymous.
New coins are made from Hashcash style proof-of-work.
The proof-of-work for new coin generation also powers the
network to prevent double-spending.
This is the last module in this introductory course. You should have all the tools necessary to read and get a high-level understanding of the white paper.
Don’t worry if you don’t understand all the details at first! Very few people grok the entire thing on the first reading. You’ll find yourself coming back to this paper time and time again. Every time, you’ll gain a little more insight into the technology that will change society’s relationship with money forever.
