Celebrate the anniversary of the bitcoin white paper with Lolli, the leading bitcoin rewards app!
On October 31, 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto distributed a white paper on bitcoin, entitled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System, to a small mailing list of some of the world's best coders.
A year later, Satoshi, bitcoin's anonymous creator, would launch bitcoin. By July 2010, one bitcoin would be worth $0.09, up from its launch price of $0. And so bitcoin began.
Read on to learn more about the bitcoin white paper and how we're celebrating it today.
What is in the bitcoin white paper?
The white paper outlines the central principles and mechanisms underlying bitcoin and how it addresses the failures of legacy payments systems.
Satoshi described their invention in the white paper, as “a purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash (that) would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution”.
At only nine pages long, the bitcoin white paper includes 12 sections, plus an abstract that details the revolutionary new digital currency that is bitcoin. These sections are:
- Introduction: In this, Satoshi outlines the problems with existing peer-to-peer payment services like PayPal, and why bitcoin solves these problems.
- Transactions: A description of how bitcoin transactions are executed, using digital signatures made public on the bitcoin network, and how bitcoin ensures the security and immutability of each transaction.
- Timestamp Server: How transactions are verified using a timestamp server which reinforces each timestamp before it and thereby creates a ‘chain’.
- Proof-of-Work: An introduction of the proof-of-work consensus mechanism.
- Network: An explanation of how the bitcoin network works, what would happen if a fork was created, and more.
- Incentive: A description of how incentives work to propagate the continuation of the bitcoin network.
- Reclaiming Disk Space: An explanation of how old blocks can be deleted without breaking the block’s hash.
- Simplified Payment Verification: How payments are verified in a reliable, immutable way using ‘honest nodes’ to control the network.
- Combining and Splitting Value: A description of how transactions on the network may be composed of multiple inputs and outputs.
- Privacy: How bitcoin protects privacy in a way that existing systems like PayPal, do not by employing public addresses and private keys.
- Calculations: Demonstrates the security of the bitcoin blockchain (AKA the math that demonstrates that hacking or defrauding bitcoin is basically impossible).
- Conclusion: Basically reiterating why we need bitcoin. Mic drop.
Why is the white paper so important?
Satoshi’s white-paper represents the original ideas and intentions underlying bitcoin. It is effectively bitcoin's mission statement, describing why we need bitcoin, and how bitcoin gives access everyone with an internet connection free and open access sound money.
The white paper also codifies some important nuances about how Satoshi understood bitcoin, as its creator; for example, nowhere in the white paper does Satoshi use the word ‘blockchain’.
Additionally, the white paper set a precedent for future cryptocurrencies, most of which now launch with a white paper written by its creator(s).
10 ways to celebrate the anniversary of the bitcoin white paper 🥳
- Read the bitcoin white paper today! It's available here.
- Celebrate bitcoin by earning it for free with Lolli on the Lolli mobile app or browser extension.
- Check out the best bitcoin memes on the internet on Lolli's Instagram.
- Check out Lolli's video on the bitcoin white paper and subscribe to our YouTube channel.
- Give a friend the gift of free bitcoin by referring them to Lolli! Share your ref link with a friend, and you'll both get free bitcoin when they sign up & shop for the first time.
- Tell a friend about bitcoin today by sending them this blog. ✨
- Find a bitcoin meetup near you.
- Read (or write!) a bitcoin poem! Here are some for inspiration.
- Thank Satoshi by buying some bitcoin!
- Tweet @TryLolli with something you love about bitcoin for a chance to get feature on our Twitter.