The bitcoin revolution

In a white paper sent to a cryptography mailing list on October 31, 2008, an unidentified individual (or group) using the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto described what the paper’s title called “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.” This paper was soon followed by a software implementation of the cash system believed to have been compiled by Nakamoto. The software was released in open-source form January 9, 2009, on a platform called SourceForge. Since then, Nakamoto’s invention has grown to the point where the market value of Bitcoin in circulation was estimated at $235 billion on January 14, according to coinmarketcap.com. This was not even the peak for the month: Bitcoin is prone to high, even extreme, volatility (especially in December 2017). The rise of cryptocurrency This volatility should not detract from the fact that Bitcoin, the oldest and most established of an ever-expanding array of cryptocurrencies, has proven over the last