Which country started the first Bitcoin currency?
George Bitcoin is considered the preeminent cryptocurrency in the world, but there's still plenty of mystery surrounding its creation. Who came up with Bitcoin? Was it created by more than one person? And who is Satoshi Nakamoto?
In August 2008, the domain name bitcoin .org was quietly registered online. Two months later, a paper entitled 'Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System' was passed around a cryptography mailing list.
The paper is the first instance of the mysterious figure, Satoshi Nakamoto's appearance on the web, and permanently links the name "Satoshi Nakamoto" to the cryptocurrency.
Bitcoin runs through an autonomous software program that is 'mined' by people seeking bitcoin in a lottery-based system. Over the course of the next 20 years, a total of 21 million coins will be released.
In a blog post from 2013, Finney says he was fascinated by the idea of a decentralized online currency. When Nakamoto announced the software's release, Finney offered to mine the first coins — 10 original bitcoins from block 70, which Satoshi sent over as a test. Exchange Bitcoin BTC to Visa/MasterCard USD with bitcoin visa
.
In 2014, Finney died of the neurodegenerative disease ALS. In one of his final posts on a Bitcoin forum, he said Satoshi Nakamoto's true identity still remained a mystery to him. Finney says he was proud of his legacy involving Bitcoin, and that his cache of bitcoins was stored in an offline wallet, left as part of an inheritance to his family.
"Hopefully, they'll be worth something to my heirs," he wrote.
As of today, one bitcoin is worth more than $10,000.