Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System
Bitcoin was first described in 2008 with the publication of a paper titled "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System", written under the alias of Satoshi Nakamoto. 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) to conduct a global lottery every 10 minutes on average, allowing the decentralized network to arrive at consensus about the state of transactions.