If you are like me, Cryptocurrency is a mystery. The very name hints of something sinister. Something so cryptic that even its authors did not even bother to explain what it is. It sounds like something the CIA would have concocted in their Moscow station at the height of the Cold War in order to escape the prying eyes of the KGB. In a huddle room during one of those snowy winters in Moscow an agent would have briefed the CIA agents of KGB’s latest attempts at infiltrating Swiss banks. Knowing full well the importance of Swiss banks in their espionage activities, the CIA would task the agent with creating a viable alternative to compensating the numerous Russian spies the CIA had on its payroll. After months of consultations, the CIA agent would regroup the team and present her findings and recommendations. CRYPTOCURRENCY, would be her recommendation. In consultation with the CIA bosses at Langley, the recommendation would be put into use. Much later, history books would vehemently point to Cryptocurreny as the turning point in the fall of the Soviet Empire.

But no. Cryptocurrency is not a historical remnant of the cold war but rather an annoying presence in my daily Facebook feeds. These days, not a single day passes before posts flood my feed detailing remarkable spikes in the price of Bitcoin. I often cringe whenever I see one of these charts. Not because they are eerily similar to those textbook cases of bubbles and bursts, but because I too missed this gravy train. But did I? Is cryptocurrency a realistic progression to where we should be heading in how we conduct monetary transactions or is it one big farce? Are we being fooled to covert our hard currency into something intangible, merely bytes on servers distributed on unknown servers across the world? More importantly, what is Bitcoin?

The history of bitcoin sprouts from a maiden white paper by Satayoshi Nakamoto which described bitcoin and created its original reference implementation. I first read Satayoshi’s white paper a few years ago. Somehow, I tossed it aside, mostly because I did not understand it, but I also assumed that it was way ahead of its time. From what I remember of my first impression, Bitcoin was untested, held no real value and proposed to destabilize proven and functional modes of commerce which, while not perfect, are intricately integrated into our way of life.