In late 2008 during the depths of the global financial crisis, someone going by the pseudonym of Satoshi Nakamoto registered a website domain and posted a nine-page white paper describing the technical workings of something called Bitcoin, a “peer-to-peer electronic cash system,” to an obscure moderated mailing list frequented by privacy-obsessed computer nerds. In January 2009, this shadowy Nakamoto figure released an alpha version of the open-source software for Bitcoin to the masses and then spent the next two years engaging in online discussions to answer questions and troubleshoot glitches with the new blockchain-based decentralized technology. In 2011, he (or she or they) abruptly went dark and disappeared into the ether, leaving the world with a self-perpetuating digital money-printing machine.
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