bitcoin.pdf

Nakamoto combined several prior inventions such as digital signatures and Hashcash to create a completely decentralized electronic cash system that does not rely on a central authority for currency issuance or settlement and validation of transactions. A key innovation was to use a distributed computation system (called a “proof-of-work” algorithm)

Nakamoto, Satoshi. Bitcoin: a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. 2008. https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf .

Bitcoin was first described in 2008 with the publication of a paper titled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System,”1 written under the alias of Satoshi Nakamoto

This verification and chaining of the blocks, and the acceptance of each new one as the legitimate base on which to build future blocks, constitute a de facto consensus on the validity of the underlying transactions. That made it effectively impossible for a single person to “double-spend” a coin. Digital counterfeiting could at last be ruled out.