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A mysterious, "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System". It was the first time that the concept of Bitcoin entered the world. But outside of the cypherpunk mailing lists – those promoting the use of privacy-enhancing technology – this event was hardly noticed. Ten years on, who has not at least heard from the cryptocurrency?
For a while, Digicash caught on. Even the likes of Deutsche Bank adopted it, and a growing list of merchants started accepting it. Compared to the credit-based systems of Visa, Mastercard and later Paypal, at least some people could see the benefits of a micropayments. Anyone with libertarian tendencies loved the idea of using a currency outside the control of any authority.
Goal Visa and Mastercard upped their game and won the battle for payment dominance. It seemed the struggle was over, but some cypherpunks refused to give up. Adam Back created "Hashcash" in 1997, which together with Wei Dai's "b-money" (both cited in Nakamoto's white paper) and Nick Szabo's "Bitgold" were the last significant efforts to create an online cash system before Bitcoin. The idea fizzled out following the dotcom bust of 2000-02. It was only brought back to life by Nakamoto in 2008.
Nakamoto's vision
Cryptography, Computer Science, and Criminally Developing a System of Economic Incentives. The cypherpunk vision to enhance privacy, limit government power and increase its transparency had finally been achieved.
Or had it? If there was any lesson to be learned from the failure of Digicash, it was possible to invent a brilliant system, but you had to convince people to use it. With Bitcoin, we have seen extraordinary numbers, with astronomical prices, and thousands of spin-off cryptocurrencies and private blockchains that are all just variations of the original.
Ethereum is arguably one of the most significant spin offs. It shows how blockchain technology can be combined with smart contracts, providing a costless, decentralized way of replacing the colossal global army of trust-based services
There is, however, only one existing blockchain that is consistent with Nakamoto's vision: Bitcoin Cash, has so-called "hard-fork" of Bitcoin that generally shares the same history and protocol, except for two crucial details. The blocks on its chain are a mbadive 32-bit larger than the original Bitcoin, and growing. More transactions per block, means lower fees per transaction, paving the way for global adoption. Plus, built-in codes that have been switched off in the original Bitcoin, have been reignited, potentially allowing all of the smart contract capabilities of Ethereum.
Vision accomplished?
The white paper itself is not explicitly about goals, but it does not depend on a trusted third party. This has already been demonstrated as a concept. The only question is what is it going to be?
A recent clue to that question may be right in the heart of London's financial center, Canary Wharf. Here, the Brewdog company recently launched a positive event accepting Bitcoin Cash as payment. It is cheaper for them to process payments to credit cards, even allowing for the cost of them to convert Bitcoin Cash back to sterling pounds. Newegg and Microsoft have also started accepting Bitcoin Cash as payment.
Further afield, more and more developing countries like South Africa are just about as enthusiastically as they are. A new app developed in Spain called HandCashapp and an even bolder concept called The Money Button hint a whole new paradigm of automatic click-based micropayments that could also spell the end of pop-up adds appearing on popular content online.
Nakamoto's vision, in some sense, may have been achieved, but will Bitcoin Cash permanently replace all currencies and become one global money? The world wide web arrived in 1990, and you could argue it was a dramatic collapse and 20 years before its true commercial potential could be realized. In 2028, it may not be feasible that the underlying technology will be the same for all money and all trust-based financial, legal and other services.
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