Location: Skype

Date: Wednesday, 15th January

Project: Tales from the Crypt & Rabbit Hole Recap

Role: Host

Welcome to the Beginner's Guide to Bitcoin.

Bitcoin can be intimidating for beginners. The protocol is complicated, the community can be aggressive and unforgiving, silly mistakes can lose you money, and it is easy to succumb to altcoin marketing.

Bitcoin does though, offer you the opportunity to hold a new type of monetary asset, one which can't be seized by the government and is censorship resistance and It has the potential to change the way the world.

The goal of What Bitcoin Did has always been about making things simple; there are no stupid questions, and the show is here to help beginners navigate this new world. To kick off 2020, we are launching a special series to help beginners understand Bitcoin. We will be looking at the basics from breaking down the protocol to explaining the economics and discussing the potential societal shift.

Beginners Guide Part 5 - The History of Bitcoin with Marty Bent

On October 31st 2008 Satoshi published the Bitcoin Whitepaper on a little known cryptography mailing list. There had previously been many attempts at digital cash, so when the whitepaper was released, it was met with a healthy amount of scepticism.

A few months later on January 3rd 2009 Satoshi Nakamoto mined the genesis block and included the message “Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks”. The message was important and indicated Satoshi’s plan for a new financial system.

In the 11 years that have passed Bitcoin has gone from a niche experiment to a network worth over $160 billion, but the history has been rollercoaster.

Anyone new coming into Bitcoin is likely to hear about critical points in history, and these events helped define Bitcoin and at times teach valuable lessons.

In Part 5 of The Beginner’s Guide to Bitcoin, I talk to Marty Bent the host of Tales from the Crypt & Rabbit Hole Recap. We discuss the key events in Bitcoin’s history from the launch of the protocol to the Silk Road and the Scaling Wars.