When it comes to bitcoin, people know that from the beginning it was worthless to now it is close to $60000 each.

Bitcoin, known as "digital gold", has experienced more than ten years of development and changes. How many little-known stories are hidden behind it.

Today, let's sort out and reveal the story.

When Nakamoto launched bitcoin in 2009, the world economy was in recession, just as the U.S. financial crisis had just occurred. In order to stimulate the economy, the Federal Reserve printed a large number of notes. It caused a huge panic, because the large amount of paper money flowing to the market will make the existing paper money and people's savings shrink and depreciate. After the crisis, there are many doubts about the existing financial system.

The birth of bitcoin just caters to the public's psychology. They are worried about the unrestricted issuance of currency. The Federal Reserve has no upper limit and can issue notes at will. The software designed by Nakamoto is different. It limits about 10 minutes to generate a group of bitcoins, with a total of 21 million. That is to say, there is an upper limit for the generation of bitcoins. Users have reason to believe that as time goes on, it will become more and more difficult to obtain, and its value will certainly rise.

The starting point of creating bitcoin is to challenge the most powerful financial institutions. It is different from US dollar and euro. It is not issued by a central bank or transferred by large financial institutions. It's the money created and managed by the users themselves, and the new money is slowly created by the people who maintain the money network.

The bitcoin invented by the founder, Nakamoto Nakamoto, is not controlled by banks or any third party. It only exists in the memory of computer operation on the network. It does not need to submit any identity certificate to any central authority to own and use it.

In practice, some small companies can accept bitcoin through "bitpay", but almost all of bitcoin is used for speculation, gambling and drug trafficking.

Some economists are also paying attention to bitcoin. At the same time, they point out that virtual currency has its inherent characteristics, which does not encourage people to use it. For example, there are 21 million bitcoins at most, which means that this kind of currency will become more and more valuable. This situation is called "deflation", which encourages people to hold rather than use.

Bitcoin holders cling to the key they hold, waiting for appreciation, which makes people doubt the intrinsic value of bitcoin key. If we don't use them, what is the real value of these closed virtual currencies? What is the support for such currency reflected in paper money?

The reality is that there is no guarantee that anyone will accept bitcoin to do anything. The main value of bitcoin is based on the expectation of the future value of bitcoin, so as to ensure that the current holder can sell at a higher price in the future.

A few years ago, bitcoin promised to distribute the benefits equally among users, but by 2014, most of the bitcoin economy was controlled by a few rich people who started investing before the popularity of bitcoin.

The identity of Nakamoto is still a mystery. Some people are sure that he is not Japanese, and various versions of Nakamoto have been speculated have not been finalized. He is a mysterious shadow figure. Segio Lerner, a system security expert in Argentina, thoroughly tracked Nakamoto's early mining activities and concluded that he dug up millions of bitcoins, which were worth $1 billion at that time. At the beginning, once Nakamoto's identity was confirmed, after he was confessed, his family was highly likely to be kidnapped and asked for ransom.

One thing happened in March 2013, which was the most significant technical failure of bitcoin network so far. It also reminds us that this network can continue to operate according to Nakamoto's internal design principles. "Hard fork" is the biggest potential threat to the bitcoin industry. How to protect basic bitcoin software from hackers and "Forks".

The founder of bitcoin, Nakamoto Tsung, suddenly disappeared in May 2011, leaving open source software for users to update and improve. It is estimated that after five years of modification, only 15% of Nakamoto's source code remains unchanged. Bitcoin, as a kind of currency, is just like money. Only when someone uses it can it be valuable and powerful. The more people use it, the more likely it will survive. If most bitcoins are taken away by one person, there will be no incentive for others to participate.

"I don't advocate socialism and I don't care if wealth is too concentrated," Nakamoto said. "But at present, when we give money to 100% of the people, we get more growth than 20%."

Technology geeks and their supporters of bitcoin for different reasons have changed their lives by ambition, greed, ideals and the fragility of human nature. At the same time, bitcoin has been transformed from vague academic articles into a multi billion dollar industry.

Some have gained wealth, some have fallen into disrepute, and some even go to jail. Bitcoin has been almost wiped out many times.

In August 2008, Nakamoto suddenly sent an email to Adam Barker, the inventor of "hash cash", asking him to read an academic essay describing bitcoin. Six weeks later, on Halloween, he sent a more substantial article to a more professional and academic research circle. The article only briefly explains the basic elements of this system, known as the "white paper" of the industry In January 2009, Nakamoto sent his entire code to the circle. The final version of the software is different from what he described in his white paper. This version of the software will generate some new currencies about every 10 minutes. If the online computer generates bitcoin faster than this, it will increase the difficulty of hash operation.

In the next few days, the software generated by Hal's blockchain is running on the network. There should be no bitcoin in the first 50 days. The first deal came on Sunday night, and he wanted to see if the system worked, so he sent Hal 10 bitcoins. In the first few weeks, several more people joined the network. Nakamoto uses his own computer to support the network. At the same time, he is doing his best to promote his technology. As long as anyone shows any interest, he will actively answer the questions.

In May 2009, Marty also joined the bitcoin online community. He won the approval of Nakamoto and gave all the permissions of bitcoin website to Madi, allowing him to improve the content of the website at will, encouraging Madi to find more professionals to help and increase the number of bitcoin online community.

Then there was Gavin Anderson, a programmer, who bought 10000 bitcoins for $50. As long as someone came to register, he gave five bitcoins. Gavin is the first person to change the source code except Nakamoto.

Rose, Roger, Eric, Charlie, vinces and others came to bitcoin online community one after another, and finally rose and Charlie were arrested and jailed. Other technology geeks have realized their dreams and goals of making money. They are all people who entered the bitcoin world in the early days and are still able to survive, and have made a lot of profits.

Vinces met Bill Gates at a meeting. As soon as he talked to gates about bitcoin, his face sank and his voice was angry. He said his foundation would never use anonymous money to develop its business.

(2021-4-9)