Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System
Bitcoin was invented in a nine-page paper published by a man who calls himself Satoshi Nakamoto.
It is often said that Bitcoin is the next generation payment system, but the paper does not explicitly state that it is a payment system.
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Overview
At the beginning of the paper, an overview of the Bitcoin paper is given, focusing on the following
- If a digital currency that utilizes a Peer-to-Peer communication method is realized, it will be possible to make direct online payments between the parties involved in a transaction without having to go through a financial institution.
- Although digital signatures can be used to achieve some of these functions, they are not enough to prevent multiple payments, and as a result, we will have to rely on financial institutions as we do now.
- In this paper, we propose a method to solve the problem of multiple payments in electronic currencies using a Peer-to-Peer system.
Other topics include the difficulty of falsifying transaction histories, what the length of the chain proves, how to eliminate attackers, and the mechanisms for maintaining the Bitcoin network.
It is worth noting here that Bitcoin was originally intended to create a mechanism for "an electronic currency without multiple payments and without the need for a third party, such as a financial institution, to act as an intermediary.
Nowadays, various specifications have been added and the community has split up, but at the time of its birth, it was a very simple idea and mechanism.
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