Ten years of Bitcoin: How it started and what the future might hold

With Bitcoin, we have seen extraordinary hype, with astronomical price booms and busts, and thousands of spin-off cryptocurrencies and private blockchains that are all just variations of the original

A mysterious, anonymous entity known as “Satoshi Nakamoto” posted a white paper on October 31 2008 entitled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”. It was the first time that the concept of Bitcoin entered the world. But outside of the cypherpunk mailing lists – those promoting the use of privacy-enhancing technology – this event was hardly noticed. Ten years on, who hasn’t at least heard of the cryptocurrency?

On just nine pages, the white paper explained how the Bitcoin system would work. Many attempts at electronic cash had already been made going right back to computer scientist David Chaum’s “Digicash” developed