The History of Cryptocurrency: Bitcoin's Long, Strange Trip to Best-Performing Asset of the Decade (2024)

First things first: what exactly is Bitcoin? Bitcoin is a form of digital cash (cryptocurrency) in which unit transactions are recorded on a digital ledger called a "blockchain." It started as an idea in a white paper in 2008, and in 2021 became the best-performing asset of the last decade with its 9,000,000% rise. You can't actually hold a Bitcoin in your hand, but you can make a ton of money off of one. Why would someone want to buy Bitcoin in the first place? Allow us to explain.

Bitcoin doesn't involve any bank or government; it's peer-to-peer currency. Unlike the American dollar or any other country's currency, Bitcoin is not regulated or underwritten by any one government. With Mastercard and other noteworthy companies bringing cryptocurrency onto their networks, many are asking: does this shift signal the beginning of the end for the dollar?

Since the 1980s, people have experimented with creating forms of digital money. For years, however, no one could figure out how to solve digital cash's "double-spend" problem. Blockchain technology solves this problem, as it serves as a public record of who owns what. It prevents people from spending the same token twice.

Owning Bitcoin is a little like stuffing your money under your mattress (if your mattress were a network of millions of computers all over the world keeping watch over your cash). Because you don't have to count on middlemen in the same way you do when your money is in the bank, you're not putting your trust in a single government or company. Mistrust of banks was one of the key contextual elements of the beginning of Bitcoin, as it started in the midst of the 2008 financial crisis.

Blockchain technology refers to a decentralized network of millions of computers around the world. Though this may conjure up images of mysterious tech experts operating secretively on laptops, actual humans are not hunched over these computers, physically writing in transactions on the digital ledger. Rather, the computers are programmed to autonomously solve complex mathematical puzzles in order to verify transactions on the ledger. The Bitcoin network verifies them. The founder of Bitcoin, Satashi Nakomoto, created digital scarcity, so that only a certain number of bitcoins can be mined each year. This seems cool, but there's a downside to all this mining: the environmental impact.

There is an ongoing debate about the energy consumption and environmental impact of Bitcoin mining. According to Cambridge research, Bitcoin mining accounts for roughly 0.6% of global electricity consumption, meaning that the Bitcoin economy has the carbon dioxide emissions of a small country. Critics argue that cryptocurrency's energy use makes it an irresponsible (and even morally reprehensible) venture.

Supporters argue that Bitcoin's energy usage is comparable to the currency systems already in place throughout the world, and that all money takes significant energy but Bitcoin provides an opportunity to shift the type of energy being used.

Peter Van Valkenburgh is the Director of Research at the Coin Center, a non-profit focused on policy issues with cryptocurrency. He argues that "Bitcoin could drive the clean energy revolution" because of "the system’s economic incentives favor clean, renewable, energy." For example: the bitcoin mining facility Enigma, established by Genesis Mining in 2014 (pictured). Enigma uses renewable energy, harnessed by hydroelectric dams and geothermal power stations, to fuel their mining.

Upon visiting the Enigma facility, British photographer Lisa Barnard said it was the loudest environment that she had ever taken photos of. "The biggest thing I remember was just the noise and the flashing lights and wiring," Barnard told WIRED. "It was like being inside a computer."

Before there was Bitcoin, there had to be "public key cryptography." In 1975, American cryptographers Whitfield Diffie (b. 1944) and Martin Hellman (b. 1945) discovered and developed the concept of public key cryptography at Stanford University. They published their ideas in a 1976 paper, "New Directions in Cryptography."

David Chaum (b. 1955) is widely recognized as the inventor of digital cash. In 1983, he published his paper "Blind Signatures for Untraceable Payments," which introduced the idea of anonymous electronic money. His company DigiCash created the first digital currency in 1995, eCash.

In 1997, British cryptographer and cypherpunk Adam Back (b. 1970) invented Hashcash, which uses a "proof of work" system that will later make Bitcoin mining possible. Back is now the CEO of Blockstream, a blockchain technology company, which he co-founded in 2014.

Bitcoin began as a white paper, "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System," published by someone using the name Satoshi Nakamoto on October 31st, 2008. The paper outlined the blockchain technology underpinning the cryptocurrency, solving the double-spend problem of digital cash. In March 2014, a Newsweek article called “The Face Behind Bitcoin" claimed that Bitcoin's inventor was a retired physicist named Dorian Nakamoto (pictured).

Dorian Nakomoto has denied the claims that he is the creator of Bitcoin. In 2016, Australian computer scientist Craig Wright claimed that he was Satoshi. This claim has been disputed by many, as Wright has no concrete proof. Wright, however, is currently suing bitcoin.org, claiming copyright over the white paper that they currently host a copy of online. The lawsuit is ongoing, and the real inventor of Bitcoin remains unknown today.

After the 2008 financial crisis, people had deep mistrust for banks and the government. In that context, a peer-to-peer form of currency made more sense and was more appealing than it might've been at other points throughout world history.

January 2015: Supporters of Ross Ulbricht protest outside the courthouse during jury selection for the case against Ulbricht. Born in 1984, Ulbright was around 27 years old at the time when he allegedly developed, created, and operated the Silk Road website.

The Silk Road was an underground market hosted on the dark web from 2011 until the FBI shut it down in 2013, primarily for the sale of illegal drugs and fake IDs. Bitcoin was the only accepted currency on the Silk Road due to its degree of anonymity.

Remember the Winklevoss twins (from real life, or from The Social Network)? They're the extremely tall, extremely identical Harvard classmates of Mark Zuckerberg who sued the Facebook founder over the origins of the mega social media site, for stealing their idea. They settled with Zuck for $65 million, but of course the rest is history. Though they may have lost Facebook, the twins have cornered the cryptocurrency market and are Bitcoin billionaires today.

The Winklevii bought $11 million worth of Bitcoins in 2013, according to the New York Times. They soon created the cryptocurrency exchange company, Gemini.