A curious project appeared on the leading website for open-source coding Sourceforge.net twelve years ago. It seemed that its author didn’t suffer from a lack of ambition – he undertook the task to, neither more nor less, reinvent… money!
This is how the anonymous author himself, bearing the nickname s_nakamoto, described his project:
“Bitcoin represents a new form of electronic money that uses a peer-to-peer blockchain network to stop double-spending. Its network is completely decentralized, having no server nor central authority.”
At first glance, this was, as one could argue, another attempt to “reinvent the wheel”. One of the many that were already flooding the Internet. However, there was more to this project than probably the event the creator (or creators) themselves realized. It took a couple of years for the first-ever cryptocurrency to take off and gather popularity.
Twelve years later, Bitcoin indeed reinvented the ways people around the work make money, gather their savings, and invest. Bitcoin became the first of many cryptocurrencies to follow and unveiled the untapped potential of digital currency that nowadays most central banks in the world explore.
