In September 1992 a mailing list began for people who believed cryptography could protect individual freedom. They called themselves cypherpunks.
The manifesto
Eric Hughes's "A Cypherpunk's Manifesto" (9 March 1993) set the tone:
- "Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age."
- "Cypherpunks write code." Don't wait for permission, build tools.
- Cash had been the main private payment system, and the digital age needed a replacement.
Attempts at digital cash
Several projects came close:
- Hashcash (Adam Back, 1997): proof that a computer did work, used against spam.
- b-money (Wei Dai, 1998): a proposal for digital money run by a network.
The hard problem was double spending without a central company keeping the books.
Bitcoin arrives
On 31 October 2008 Satoshi Nakamoto posted the Bitcoin white paper to the Cryptography mailing list: "a new electronic cash system that's fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party." It cites both b-money and Hashcash, and solves double spending with proof of work.
Takeaway
Bitcoin was not a random invention. It was the result of decades of work by people who wanted money that respected privacy and needed no permission.