10 Years Since Satoshi's Vision Was Brought to Life

October 31 marks the 10 year anniversary of the release of Bitcoin's whitepaper, which described the way in which the Bitcoin protocol would work.

Satoshi made use of the data structure from Haber and Stornetta's original work so that Bitcoin's timestamp server takes the hash of a block of transactions and timestamps it before it is broadcast to the network.

In the Bitcoin whitepaper, Satoshi directly refers to Back's Hashcash system as a reference to the Bitcoin proof-of-work algorithm.

"There's no single piece of the puzzle that I think is more important than the others. Nakamoto's genius was not any of the individual components of Bitcoin, but rather the intricate way in which they fit together to breathe life into the system."

"Satoshi Nakamoto's innovation was that it fixed all the broken thinking with all the projects that came before it, where they were unable to solve the problem of creating digital money. The previous work that was done was incremental thinking at best and flawed, independently. Satoshi brought it all together in a single stroke of brilliance. Ironically though, the mindset that went into the prior projects, seems to be creeping back into Bitcoin, for better or worse, now that Satoshi is gone."

As we celebrate a decade since the inception of Bitcoin in Satoshi Nakamoto's whitepaper, there is a lot to be cognisant of.

The original protocol, as set out in Nakamoto's whitepaper, has remained largely the same, but it is the technological advances that have occured around Bitcoin that are likely to shape what it becomes in the next ten years.

"In another 10 years, Bitcoin will still be around close to its current form, but it will be a side show. The actual systems that people will use to transact value and to execute contracts will bear no resemblance to today's systems."

Seemingly disconcerted with a focus on ideological opinions over technological solutions, he hopes that the community can look for ways to make Bitcoin attainable in the years to come.

Casting market speculation aside, Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoin whitepaper paved the way for cryptocurrencies to challenge conventional financial systems and banks.