A nine-page document
A document assembling public-key cryptography, digital signatures, proof of work and peer-to-peer networking into one complete system appeared on a mailing list.
Watch it happen in “Before Bitcoin” →Why it happened
- 01零件在 1976 年到 1999 年间已经逐个被造出来。
- 02此前的尝试各自用到其中几块，但没有一个跑起来 —— 缺的是把它们连成环的那一步。
- 032008 年秋天的金融危机使「必须信任中间人」第一次被大规模怀疑。
Before · After
Before
Ownership and settlement in the digital world required a third party to attest to them.
After
A path existed to reach agreement without an attesting party — though nobody had yet shown it would actually run.
Why it matters
What it did was not invention but assembly. That is why the next seventeen years of technology all sit on top of parts that already existed.