Bitcoin's White Paper Was a Model T for Payments

This exclusive opinion piece is part of CoinDesk's "Bitcoin at 10: The Satoshi White Paper" series.

After the publication of Satoshi's white paper, that's no longer the case.

Outlined in the paper was a peer-to-peer payment system poised to disrupt the financial industry, one that gave people the power to conduct transactions across a distributed network without the need for trusted middlemen.

At the core of this white paper was the chance to democratize value exchange.

The consensus protocol for bitcoin transactions requires every participant to enforce the rules, this way no one party can control what makes a transaction valid.

The Model T was a practical and affordable option, democratizing the car industry.

Bitcoin was a catalyst for the industry, and thousands of others have since been inspired by it and iterated on blockchain technology.

Maybe bitcoin won't survive, or maybe it becomes the ultimate store of value.

It's been over 100 years since the Model T's creation, and the industry is still coming out with new concepts such as the driverless car and all-electric vehicles.

If the pattern holds, the next decade will bring an explosion of low-cost, high-speed payments that will transform value exchange the way the Internet transformed information exchange.