Bitcoin- The Mysterious Cryptocurrency

As we all know that Bitcoin is the most famous cryptocurrency in the world. At present the price of 1 Bitcoin when converted to US dollars will be equal to $33,663.30, damn that’s a huge lot of money.

Well, don’t know what cryptocurrencies are?

A cryptocurrency is a digital currency that can be used to buy goods and services but uses an online ledger with strong cryptography to secure online transactions.

And there are more than 6,700 different cryptocurrencies in the world traded publicly. The total value of all cryptocurrencies in the world as of Jan 27 2021 was more than $897.3 billion. I’m amazed to see that digital currency having that much value.

In this post, I’m going to discuss the journey and controversies of one of the most common and famous cryptocurrencies in the world, you know what it is, the Bitcoin. Let’s get started.

The History and Cases of Bitcoin

In 2008 the domain name bitcoin.org was registered. And on 2009 Bitcoin came into existence as the first decentralized currency that runs on Blockchain technology.

First mentioned in a white paper that was published by the mysterious man Satoshi Nakamoto.

Bitcoin promised the ability to conduct government-free transactions, relying on digital signature and digital coins.

All the transactions of bitcoins were kept on a ledger that can publicly be accessed, maintaining transparency.

Due to the ability to conduct government-free transactions, bitcoin was rapidly adapted by people who deal with illegal stuff.

In 2011 a website called the Silk Road Appeared on a website called Tor that is used to browse the dark web.

The founder of Silk Road goes by the name of Dread Pirate Roberts. The Silk Road allows anyone to buy any illegal things like human slaves, hit orders for assassins, etc. and most of the transactions were done in Bitcoins.

In 2013, a 29-year man named Ross Ulbricht was arrested for suspicion of being the Dread Pirate Roberts.

And in 2015 he was accused of transferring narcotics, he was given 2 life sentences and an addition of 40 years without the possibility of Parole.

The Mystery Man Satoshi Nakamoto

Satoshi Nakamoto is known as the founder of Bitcoin. He was also given a Novel Price for Economics and is a multi-billionaire, yet nobody knows what he looks like. Isn’t it something to be thought about?

In October 2008, someone going by the name of Satoshi Nakamoto wrote a paper called “Bitcoin”.

He began to email all of the Cypherpunks(A cypherpunk is any individual advocating widespread use of strong cryptography and privacy-enhancing technologies as a route to social and political change) asking them if they’re willing to help him create his idea of a new system that he developed called “Blockchain”.

Sadly many of the Cypherpunks ignored Satoshi’s request. But one computer programmer from California named Hal Finney saw its potential, and he was the first person to accept Satoshi Nakamoto’s request.

He agreed to work on the Bitcoin project for free and in January 2009, Bitcoin was created.

Although Hal Finney and Satoshi Nakamoto have worked on the Bitcoin project together they have never met each other face to face and never talked to each other through voice call either.

Maybe they communicated with each other over emails. Nakamoto left his email address on the Bitcoin website, which leads many programmers to join in and help them.

In 2014, a Japanese-American man named Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto was arrested by the FBI for the suspicion of being Satoshi Nakamoto, the founder of Bitcoin.

However, he insisted over and over again that he have no idea about Bitcoin or the questions the FBI was asking him.

After the paparazzi showed up, the news false reported that Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto was the true founder of Bitcoin.

Today Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto is titled the "Fake Satoshi Nakamoto".

After that incident many people claimed themselves to be the real Satoshi Nakamoto, just to get some attention and to be in the limelight.

My Final Thoughts

No matter what the price of Bitcoin is in the future, Bitcoin may remain with us forever due to its underlying blockchain mining.

And it’ll difficult for the government to shut it down.

Countries like Japan, The United States, Germany, etc. have already started accepting Bitcoin as a legal tender and it is not so far that all countries will start accepting Bitcoin as a legal tender.

With all those controversies of Bitcoin and numbers of investigation, it is still unknown who is the real Satoshi Nakamoto and what does he look like.

I wonder that Satoshi doesn’t like to be in the limelight and enjoys being behind the shadows.