Writing code and ordering pizza: How pioneers pushed Bitcoin forward

In 2010, programmer Laszlo Hanicz paid 10,000 bitcoins for two pizzas. About the people without whom Bitcoin would not be what it is today.

May 22 marks the 14th anniversary of Bitcoin Pizza Day, the day the good was paid for with Bitcoin for the first time. In this context, Laszlo Hanicz and Jeremy Sturdivant made history. But they are just two of many people who made Bitcoin what it is today. List (incomplete):

Inventor

from Satoshi Nakamoto unknown. It just appeared on the Internet. On October 31, 2008, when the world was in the grip of a severe financial crisis, he published a document titled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System,” in which he presented a payment system that was entirely to be implemented. Without banks and other intermediaries. It must be powered by a network and secured with encryption (through cryptography) and consumes power. Nakamoto sent his white paper to a mailing list of so-called cypherpunks, people who have fought for online privacy and against digital surveillance. Response was initially limited; Many had doubts about the success of the anonymous programmer's project. On January 3, 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto finally launched Bitcoin and created the first block, the Genesis block. He has been eagerly involved in Bitcoin mining and has mined about 1 million Bitcoins (which today are worth 58 billion euros). In 2011, he announced that he wanted to devote himself to other things, and disappeared from the scene, never touching his Bitcoin. A legend was born.

Guide, advisor

Hal Vinny He was a software developer who, together with Phil Zimmerman, developed PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) encryption technology. While many other crypto experts were skeptical of Satoshi Nakamoto's proposal (there had already been several failed attempts at decentralized cryptocurrencies), Vinnie became interested and helped Satoshi improve his software. After the latter launched Bitcoin and was the only participant in the network for a week, Vinnie joined and announced to a wider audience on Twitter on January 11, 2009: “Running Bitcoin.” When there were more participants, Vinny stopped mining Bitcoin because the loud fan noise bothered him. A year later, he learned that he could now trade Bitcoin for the dollar and secure his coins. He died in 2014. Today, January 11 is still celebrated by the Bitcoin community as Bitcoin Uptime Day, including current events. Some even believe that Hal Finney was Satoshi Nakamoto.

Cypherpunks

American mathematician and programmer Eric Hughes He is not directly related to Bitcoin, but he wrote the “Cypherpunk Manifesto” in 1993. In it, he defined privacy as the ability to selectively communicate with the world. He also summed up what the movement that later gave rise to Bitcoin represented: “Cypherpunks writing code.” They do not ask, they program and create facts. At that time it was cryptographic technologies, and later Bitcoin: both were software that ultimately could not be blocked.

Proof of work

Nakamoto didn't have to invent Bitcoin from scratch, there were people who did the groundwork. almost adam buck, British computer scientist, hacker and cypherpunk. Buck invented Hashcash, a type of spam filter, in the 1990s. The idea was that email senders had to solve easy mathematical problems. If someone wanted to send millions of emails, the effort or costs would be very high. Thus Adam Back invented “Proof of Work,” which Nakamoto used in Bitcoin. Anyone who wants to participate in the Bitcoin network must invest energy into solving computational problems. Since the result can be verified by other participants in the network, the fraud does not pay off, because you will have wasted your energy in vain. Some people believe that Adam Back is Satoshi Nakamoto, which he himself denies. He founded Blockstream, which is active in the field of Bitcoin mining and development.

Order pizza

Programmer and Bitcoin pioneer Laszlo Hanic He was asked in 2010 whether Bitcoin could become a means of payment if no one paid for goods or services with it. He asked on an IT forum if someone wanted to deliver him two slices of pizza for 10,000 Bitcoin. No one answered for days. When Hanic asked, the 19-year-old felt pity jeremy Sturdivant, I purchased two pizzas from Papa John's and had them delivered on May 22nd. In the end, neither of them got rich from it. But Hanyecz didn't want that at all. He made some trades like this to help Bitcoin take off and now works as an employee in the IT sector. Sturdivant was soon spending his bitcoin on video games and travel. Some people think that the two must be angry today because they spent Bitcoin. On the other hand, if no one had ever paid with Bitcoin, who knows if it would be as valuable today.