Falling to bits

31 October 2018 By Tom Buerkle

The digital money is marking its first decade with a punishing slump. Fraud and regulatory zeal have dried up issuance of rival cryptocurrencies. The underlying blockchain technology has yet to produce its first killer app. It’s a long way from Satoshi’s revolution.

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Oct. 31 marks 10 years since the publication of the paper that laid the basis for the bitcoin digital currency.

Satoshi Nakamoto’s “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” outlined a system that would allow people or companies to make online payments without using any financial institution. Time-stamped transactions would be recorded in a distributed ledger that would become known as a blockchain.

In January 2009, Nakamoto sent 10 bitcoins to cryptographer Hal Finney as a test, the first recorded exchange of the currency. In May 2010, software programmer Laszlo Hanyecz made the first purchase, paying 10,000 bitcoins – then worth less than $100 – for two pizzas.

Bitcoin was trading around $6,300 on Oct. 31, down more than two-thirds from the record high of nearly $20,000 in December 2017. Nakamoto’s identity remains unknown.

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