If you’ve heard of any application of blockchain technology, it’s likely bitcoin. Roop Gill explores the history of the digital currency and the impact it has had to date. [This article was first published in the Blockchain Issue of Tech City News Magazine, which came out in spring, 2016.]
Money, as we knew it, changed in 2008. The ripple effects of the financial crisis paralysed the global economy. British financial institutions were nursing losses of $2.8tn. The damage in America reached $10.2tn. What followed was a whirlwind of recession, buyouts and quantitative easing. People started to lose faith in the ability of governments to effectively manage money.
In November of the same year, a low-profile member of The Cryptography Mailing List on metzdowd.com published a paper. The person, or group, gave their name as Satoshi Nakamoto. The user profile said they were from Japan, but their email address was from a German service. The research paper described a new type of global and decentralised digital currency, not to be handled by any middleman or government. They called it bitcoin....