Today is Bitcoin's 10th Birthday. Here are 10 posts you won't want to miss.
10 years ago today, Satoshi Nakamoto created the Bitcoin Genesis Block, building off of the Bitcoin white paper he had released a few months earlier.
Most people who own bitcoin haven't been around for more than a couple of years of Bitcoin's history. The latest hype cycle that saw the price of bitcoin rise from under $1,000 USD in January 2017 to over $19,000 USD in December of 2017 brought in a lot of new people who bought bitcoin mainly as a speculative asset.
We're strong believers that once you buy some bitcoin and have skin in the game, you'll be much more open to learning what it's all about. Understanding Bitcoin and the context around it is a deep rabbit hole that opens up all sorts of new interesting topics for exploration, including:
- Economics
- The money system
- Game theory
- Security
- Internet privacy
- Social dynamics
- Buying and selling
- Open source
- And much, much more
10 years ago today, Satoshi Nakamoto, posted the Bitcoin white paper to a little-followed cryptography mailing list. It's a great day to learn more about Bitcoin, its history, and the context around it.
Here are some great posts to dive into, that you won't want to miss:
- This tweet thread by Vijay Boyapati, outlining the context in which Bitcoin was delivered.
- This Hackernoon article dissecting the Bitcoin white paper in four minutes (explains some of the more technical aspects).
- A four-part article series on Bitcoin's creation called "Planting Bitcoin" by Dan Held. This one reads like a thriller.
- Aaron van Wirdum's piece about an earlier attempt to create electronic cash: "With Bit Gold, Szabo Was Inches Away From Inventing Bitcoin".
- The Unchained Podcast's "Reflections on the 10-Year Anniversary of the Bitcoin White Paper - Ep.90" – a really insightful chat about Bitcoin, what motivated it, and where it fits into the world today.
- The documentary "Banking on Bitcoin" (Trailer), which came out in 2016 and is currently available on Netflix. Learn about Bitcoin's history and foundations without getting lost in stories about the price volatility of the last year.
- A thorough summary post by CNBC called "Bitcoin turns 10 — how it went from an abstract idea to a $100 billion market in a decade".
- The article "The Bullish Case for Bitcoin" by Vijay Boyapati makes his case for Bitcoin's future success.
- Nic Carter describes how "Blockchain is a Semantic Wasteland" in this article.
- Nassim Taleb's expounding of Bitcoin as "an insurance policy against an Orwellian future" – "It may fail but we now know how to do it."
These are all a great place to start to learn more about Bitcoin, the decentralized cryptocurrency that has changed the world over the last 10 years.
To think, it all started by putting few ideas put together in a white paper, and some lines of code.
What will the next 10 years hold? Post your best guesses below!