by the team at Soluna

At about the same time the world was experiencing a global financial crisis, the beginnings of a new wave of innovation in the electronic age were underway. 

On January 10, 2009, Hal Finney, a prominent cryptologist, and cypherpunk, received an unusual email from an unfamiliar name – Satoshi Nakamoto.

The email included a document that described a new form of digital money called Bitcoin. This “e-cash” was not going to be your typical payment gateway. It described a new form of currency and payment system based on a decentralized peer-to-peer network that required no trusted authority. In fact, it assumed no trust in the system and sought to eliminate the need for financial intermediaries altogether.

Satoshi combined computer science, cryptography, and mathematics to produce a suite of technologies to realize this new network. 

The underlying technology powering Bitcoin is known as the blockchain.  

The blockchain is a combination of technologies used to create a decentralized peer-to-peer network to manage ownership of digital assets. 

To understand the blockchain, you must understand the problems Satoshi had to solve in order to create Bitcoin.