Blockchain image courtesy of David Stankiewicz under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
By Eswar Prasad, July 11, 2022
Blockchain image courtesy of David Stankiewicz under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
Bitcoin, the original cryptocurrency, was designed to serve as a medium of exchange that could be used for financial transactions without relying on central bank money or a trusted intermediary, such as a commercial bank or credit card company (Nakamoto 2008). Equally alluring from a libertarian perspective, bitcoin promised to enable transactions using only transacting parties’ digital rather than real identities. That is, it enabled pseudonymous transactions. Its creation in 2009, amidst the global financial crisis when trust in governments and traditional financial institutions was at its nadir, perfectly fit the zeitgeist of the time.
How does bitcoin work?
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