11 years ago, on Halloween’s eve, Satoshi Nakamoto published Bitcoin White Paper and marked the beginning of a major disruption of centralized financial power by the new world of decentralised digital currencies.
The 9-page document called Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System brought Satoshi’s vision of Bitcoin’s “trustless” protocol to life and detailed ways of applying a peer-to-peer network to generate what was described as “a system for electronic transactions without relying on trust”. Therefore, Satoshi proposed a system that essentially got rid of intermediaries when facilitating a transaction, replacing the need for banks and financial institutions:
“What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party.”
Just 2 months later, on January 3rd 2009, when Satoshi generated the very first block of Bitcoin, known as block number zero, and got a reward of first 50 Bitcoins. The first transaction occurred 10 days later – Satoshi sent 10 BTC to computer scientist and cyberpunk Hal Finney, adding to the speculation that he might actually be the Bitcoin’s creator.
Since then Bitcoin has made the outstanding journey to the Moon (but not back yet), starting from when one could buy 1300 BTC for $1, till the amazing peak of price of $20K in December 2017. As of the middle of October, network data revealed that since the block genesis Bitcoin miners have received combined revenue of just under $15 billion.