Bitcoin Pre-History - Digital Money
To understand Bitcoin its important to understand the pre-history and relevance of the technological, privacy, cryptography and enhancements in digital money over the years until Satoshi's discovery/invention of Bitcoin.
Satoshi combined multiple technologies and focused on failures of previous attempts to reach perfect, sound money.
Problem = Corruption in Central Banking
FIRST ATTEMPT
When - 1983
What - eCash (eCash by Digicash Inc)
Who - David Chaum
How - Blind Signature Technology
Why (did it fail to be Bitcoin) - Centralised + David Chaum wasn't a great businessman + no market for it.
The server it was hosted on also stored Cyberbucks that were being used at the time.. when switched off killing that project also - Cyberbucks had 100m total supply and were being used and gaining momentum at the time the Digicash server was switched off.
SECOND ATTEMPT
When - 1994
What - Cybercash
Who - Daniel C Lynch
How - Online Wallet + CyberCoin a micropayment system
Why (did it fail to be Bitcoin) - Product/Market Fit, Y2K Bug issue then Chapter 11 2001
THIRD ATTEMPT
When - 1996
What - E gold
Who - Douglas Jackson & Barry Downey
How - Backed by Gold
Why (did it fail to be Bitcoin) - Centralisation, Counter Party Risk etc
FORTH ATTEMPT
When - 1997
What - Hashcash
Who - Adam Back
How - POW
Why (did it fail to be Bitcoin) - it didn't, its a fundamental PART of Bitcoin
FiFTH ATTEMPT
When - 1998
What - B-money
Who - Wei Dai
How - POW + All participants govern all transactions
Why (did it fail to be Bitcoin) - Never offically launched - white paper only
SIXTH ATTEMPT
When - 1998
What - Bit-gold
Who - Nick Szabo
How - Decentralised, blockchain (time-stamped blocks), POW, cryptography, mining would vary over time, unlimited number of units
Why (did it fail to be Bitcoin) - Never implemented
Hal's ATTEMPT
When - 2004
What - RPOW
Who - Hal Finney
How - Using Adam Back's PoW and HashCash with security that uses servers that allow users to verify correctness sin real time.
Why (did it fail to be Bitcoin) - Could not solve the double spend problem
OTHERS
When - 2004+
What - Various online retail currencies during the dot com bubble. Video games currencies, Diablo 2 (special mention)
