The whitepaper

In plain words

On October 31, 2008, someone calling themselves Satoshi Nakamoto posted a nine-page paper: "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System." It explained how strangers could run digital money together — a public chain of blocks, mining to agree on the order of payments, no bank needed. The network went live two months later and has followed that blueprint ever since.

Why it matters

• The founding document — still the cleanest summary of how Bitcoin works.
• Published mid-crisis, weeks after Lehman Brothers collapsed.
• A motivated beginner can read it in an afternoon.

Go deeper

• The whitepaper itself — read the original.
• Satoshi Nakamoto
• The genesis block