What is Bitcoin?

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Bitcoin is the world’s largest decentralized computing network and open-source software. It is also one of the world’s largest financial settlement systems and currencies (ie, BTC). Bitcoin has three main components: 

1. the physical infrastructure of the network (nodes, data centres); 
2. the open-source software/protocol that guides the network; and 
3. the digital currency (BTC) that is issued and transacted over the network. BTC is a fully digital, decentralized, and globally accessible currency. 

Bitcoin (BTC) is being increasingly adopted and used globally by individuals, communities, organizations, businesses, and governments. It is already making a meaningful difference in the lives of people around the world, bringing new opportunities for financial inclusion, bolstering human rights, increasing employment, and spurring community economic development. Innovation through Bitcoin mining and data centres is also helping us advance our global climate goals, enabling the scale up of renewable energy supply, the stabilization of energy grids, and the introduction of electric power to many remote communities around the world for the very first time. 

Bitcoin was introduced on October 31, 2008 when its pseudonymous creator(s), Satoshi Nakamoto, published a White Paper entitled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System to the "Cypherpunks" mailing list. Cypherpunks were and remain a wide group of individuals focused on advancing strong cryptography and privacy-enhancing technologies to protect civil and human rights in the digital age. Notable among them was activist and feminist Judith (St. Jude) Milhon who co-founded the group and helped pave the way for women in computing and to make the internet a safe and empowering place for all. 

Milhon was a passionate civil rights activist who participated in the voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama and was part of the "New Left" movement in the 1960s and 1970s. She found her niche amongst a group of computer specialists who became colloquially known as “hackers”, thus beginning the intersection of her activism with computer science. Milhon was an avid writer and feminist who used her wit and technical knowledge to encourage other women to enter the male-dominated world of computing. The catchphrase for her long-running campaign to get women involved in technology was “Girls need modems!”

When Satoshi Nakamoto introduced the Bitcoin White Paper to the Cypherpunks mailing list in late 2008, it described a revolutionary new technology that created the world’s first genuine peer-to-peer and decentralized monetary system. Following more than two months of exchanges with numerous cryptographers and developers via the list, Nakamoto released the actual Bitcoin network/software into the world on January 3, 2009. On that date, Nakamoto mined what is called the "genesis block" of Bitcoin (block number 0), which had a reward of 50 bitcoins (BTC). 

Embedded in the Bitcoin genesis block was the text: The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks, a reference to the headline in the newspaper The Times from that day. This note serves as both a permanent timestamp of the genesis date and as an enduring criticism of bank bailouts, financial mismanagement, and socio-economic inequity in the wake of the 2008 Great Financial Crisis. This was a precursor to the Occupy Wall Street movement. While the promising momentum gained through Occupy movements worldwide ultimately fizzled out, Bitcoin marches on and many consider Bitcoin to be "Occupy Wall Street with teeth". That's to say, a promising grassroots social movement for the 99%, not the 1%.

Although Bitcoin itself is a novel technology, it drew from more than 40 years of lessons and experiments in cryptography and digital money, many of which were led by other notable participants of the Cypherpunks mailing list and with whom Satoshi Nakamoto interacted extensively. The majority of these are captured in the chronologies below.