English

Bitcoin and Decentralized Trust Protocols

Computers and Society 2016-04-20 v2 History and Overview

Abstract

Bitcoin is the first decentralized peer-to-peer (P2P) electronic currency. It was created in November 2008 by Satoshi Nakamoto. Nakamoto released the first implementation of the protocol in an open source client software and the genesis of bitcoins began on January 9th 2009. The Bitcoin protocol is based on clever ideas which solve a form of the Byzantine Generals Problem and sets the foundation for Decentralized Trust Protocols. Still in its infancy, the currency and the protocol have the potential to disrupt the international financial system and other sectors where business is based on trusted third parties. The security of the bitcoin protocol relies on strong cryptography and one way hashing algorithms.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1601.05254,
  title  = {Bitcoin and Decentralized Trust Protocols},
  author = {Ricardo Perez-Marco},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1601.05254},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

This is a general survey article to appear on the June 2016 issue of the Newsletter of the EMS. 8 pages, 5 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-22T12:33:19.917Z