Originally published on October 31, 2008, by the pseudonymous inventor Satoshi Nakamoto, the Bitcoin Whitepaper is one of the most groundbreaking works of computer science since the internet. It lays the foundations for electronic peer-to-peer money and its underlying blockchain technology. The paper is titled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.
Satoshi came up with the idea of an electronic currency that could make transactions at low cost and use no third-party financial institutions. It is not designed to be used by a central server but rather uses many terminals that are connected via a peer-to-peer (P2P) network. It explains how the proof of work structure renders falsification of transaction information nearly impossible.
The Bitcoin Whitepaper is only nine pages long and is a proposal for a trustless system of electronic transactions. For those who are interested, the original document can be read and downloaded at https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
