Gold became a currency about 2000 years ago. Around 1000 years ago, silver was gradually adopted as the general equivalent for market circulation. In ancient times, humans also used livestock, slates, shells, jades as currencies. In the past, humans chose a substance as currency basically based on its rarity and stability. As the economy developed and trading flourished, the barter form was gradually replaced by paper money or credit vouchers. And the earliest use of paper money can be traced back to China, in the 7th century A.D. National fiat currencies gradually became the mainstream transaction mediums about 300 years ago — the GBP is the most “oldest” fiat currency. From the early gold standard to modern credit currencies, the problem of fiat currencies has become increasingly apparent — fiat currency has no intrinsic value and no use value. It has “value” only because the people who use it as a medium of the exchange agree on its value: people trust it will be accepted by merchants and others. And the guarantee of all this only comes from the government’s credit and people’s trust behind the currency.

Therefore, the overissue of fiat money became the inevitable end. In terms of real purchasing power, the GBP has lost more than 99% of its value in 300 years, while the U.S. dollar has lost about 90% over the last century. Most fiat currencies suffer from high inflation for a long time, which has devastating effects on savers—high inflation can make it difficult for everyone except the rich to save for the future, because saving money causes their real purchasing power to drop rapidly.

In fact, modern currencies have entered an era of chaos and disorder. After the gold standard was abandoned, the pure credit currency system was riddled with holes, and the fiat money over issue became the government’s “fiscal opium”. In a word—the government was unable to control itself running on the road of currency overissue, then the financial crisis came from this. The most recent financial crisis with a huge impact was the global financial crisis of 2007-2008. The results were catastrophic. In September 2008, the financial crisis began to spiral out of control and caused several fairly large financial institutions collapsed or were taken over by the government. This precipitated the Great Recession, and it took years for the whole world to recover.

On October 31, 2008, a few weeks after the U.S. government authorized a $700 billion bailout of banks, an anonymous person — Satoshi Nakamoto — released a technical white paper outlining a new electronic payment system called Bitcoin. Satoshi submitted the white paper to a cryptography researcher email list called Cypherpunks.

The Cypherpunks can be traced back to 1993, a “Cypherpunk Manifesto” issued by mathematician Eric Hughes. And the early initiators also included Intel senior scientist Timothy C. May and DHCP author John Gilmore. They realized that the Internet had to be able to transmit not only information, but also value—the Internet should have its own currency.

On this path, in 1994, Nick Szabo proposed the concept of smart contracts. In 1998, Wei Dai designed B-Money, which proposed a way for everyone to participate in bookkeeping. In 2002, Adam Back invented POW technology. Then 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto published the Bitcoin white paper. At 18:15 on January 3, 2009 (UTC), on a server in cold Helsinki, Satoshi created the first block (Block 0) of Bitcoin. This moment was so inconspicuous at the time, but perhaps no one including Satoshi Nakamoto could have imagined that Bitcoin would grow into what it is today.

Gold became a currency about 2000 years ago. Around 1000 years ago, silver was gradually adopted as the general equivalent for market circulation. In ancient times, humans also used livestock, slates, shells, jades as currencies. In the past, humans chose a substance as currency basically based on its rarity and stability. As the economy developed and trading flourished, the barter form was gradually replaced by paper money or credit vouchers. And the earliest use of paper money can be traced back to China, in the 7th century A.D. National fiat currencies gradually became the mainstream transaction mediums about 300 years ago — the GBP is the most “oldest” fiat currency. From the early gold standard to modern credit currencies, the problem of fiat currencies has become increasingly apparent — fiat currency has no intrinsic value and no use value. It has “value” only because the people who use it as a medium of the exchange agree on its value: people trust it will be accepted by merchants and others. And the guarantee of all this only comes from the government’s credit and people’s trust behind the currency.

Therefore, the overissue of fiat money became the inevitable end. In terms of real purchasing power, the GBP has lost more than 99% of its value in 300 years, while the U.S. dollar has lost about 90% over the last century. Most fiat currencies suffer from high inflation for a long time, which has devastating effects on savers—high inflation can make it difficult for everyone except the rich to save for the future, because saving money causes their real purchasing power to drop rapidly.

In fact, modern currencies have entered an era of chaos and disorder. After the gold standard was abandoned, the pure credit currency system was riddled with holes, and the fiat money over issue became the government’s “fiscal opium”. In a word—the government was unable to control itself running on the road of currency overissue, then the financial crisis came from this. The most recent financial crisis with a huge impact was the global financial crisis of 2007-2008. The results were catastrophic. In September 2008, the financial crisis began to spiral out of control and caused several fairly large financial institutions collapsed or were taken over by the government. This precipitated the Great Recession, and it took years for the whole world to recover.

On October 31, 2008, a few weeks after the U.S. government authorized a $700 billion bailout of banks, an anonymous person — Satoshi Nakamoto — released a technical white paper outlining a new electronic payment system called Bitcoin. Satoshi submitted the white paper to a cryptography researcher email list called Cypherpunks.

The Cypherpunks can be traced back to 1993, a “Cypherpunk Manifesto” issued by mathematician Eric Hughes. And the early initiators also included Intel senior scientist Timothy C. May and DHCP author John Gilmore. They realized that the Internet had to be able to transmit not only information, but also value—the Internet should have its own currency.

On this path, in 1994, Nick Szabo proposed the concept of smart contracts. In 1998, Wei Dai designed B-Money, which proposed a way for everyone to participate in bookkeeping. In 2002, Adam Back invented POW technology. Then 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto published the Bitcoin white paper. At 18:15 on January 3, 2009 (UTC), on a server in cold Helsinki, Satoshi created the first block (Block 0) of Bitcoin. This moment was so inconspicuous at the time, but perhaps no one including Satoshi Nakamoto could have imagined that Bitcoin would grow into what it is today.