Yesterday, ten years ago, Bitcoin saw the world for the first time. A white paper was published under the name Satoshi Nakamoto, which proposed a digital currency unknown at the time called “Bitcoin”. To this day it is not known who Nakamoto really was, despite many rumors and speculations, but one thing remained, his idea of the independent currency, which is salvaged and controlled in the peer-to-peer system. A revolution in the financial sector and the start of a trend movement that will accompany us for years and decades to come.
But let’s start at the beginning. Bitcoin (₿) is a crypto currency, a form of electronic money. The special feature of the virtual money system is that it is a decentralised digital currency that does not require a central bank or a single official administrator. Bitcoin thus enables people to send and receive money without an external intermediary.
“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.”
Bitcoin – a building block of the future
The development of the various branches of industry has always been marked by groundbreaking technologies and inventions. Whether through the steam engine or electrification, they have all had a lasting impact on society. In times of digitalization and the fourth industrial revolution, Bitcoin, together with the Blockchain technology, could be an essential building block for the future.
The enormous success of the project also shows that the crypto currency does not work so quickly. Since its first publication the price of the Bitcoins rose from under a cent to approximately 20,000 dollar in the year 2017! But even more groundbreaking is the accompanying introduction of the blockchain and the associated benefits for our lives and our companies.
A journey through the history of Bitcoin
The platform Cointelegraph, which specializes in reporting on the topic of crypto currencies, shows the history of Bitcoin very vividly in this infographics together.
A Short History of Bitcoin (Source: Cointelegraph)
The future of Bitcoin and Blockchain
Nobody can say where the journey will take us today, but my forecasts as a futurist and innovation profiler say that the first ten years were just the beginning. Blockchain technology will become an essential building block of our future society, bringing confidence and security to an ever more complex data world. As far as the Bitcoin project is concerned, it all depends on how things continue after the gold digging era. If more and more countries, such as Japan, regulate the digital currency and it continues to spread in digital commerce, it can experience an enormous price increase by 2020. According to industry leaders such as John MacAfee, Bitcoin is set to rise to $500,000 or even $1 million over the next two years!
A lot has happened since the Bitcoin white paper and it remains exciting, so on the tenth anniversary of the crypto currency it is important to pause for a moment and marvel at what was possible in a decade.
