historibitcoin

📜 1. The pioneers: before Bitcoin

Before Bitcoin existed, the idea of a digital currency without banks was already circulating in cryptographic circles. In 1983, David Chaum proposed Ecash, an anonymous electronic money system backed by a central authority. It was revolutionary, but it depended on third parties.

In 1997, Adam Back created Hashcash, introducing 'proof of work' (PoW), essential to prevent spam and double spending. Then came proposals like Wei Dai's b-money and Nick Szabo's bit gold, concepts where users would perform computational tasks to mint money.