Planting Bitcoin? Part Three: Soil

Sending the Bitcoin white paper to the cryptography mailing list on October 31, 2008 was the obvious choice.

Nick Szabo, designed a mechanism for a decentralized digital currency he called "Bit gold." Bit gold was never implemented, but has been called "a direct precursor to the Bitcoin architecture".

Hal Finny, who created the first reusable proof of work system before Bitcoin.

David Chaum, founded DigiCash as a form of centralized "Electronic money" that deployed the same kinds of cryptographic protocols - public key cryptography - that support the nature of bitcoin transactions.

Satoshi cites many of these Cypherpunks in the Bitcoin whitepaper and references their influence on Bitcoin's development in public statements made post code launch.

"If the Bitcoin Whitepaper is the Declaration of Independence, the Source Code is the Constitution."?-? Pierre Rochard.

"Cypherpunks write code. We know that someone has to write software to defend privacy, and since we can't get privacy unless we all do, we're going to write it. We publish our code so that our fellow Cypherpunks may practice and play with it. Our code is free for all to use, worldwideWe know that software can't be destroyed and that a widely dispersed system can't be shut down."?-?A Cypherpunk's Manifesto.

To prove fairness, he included a proof of no premine timestamp in the Genesis Block of the Bitcoin blockchain.

Bitcoin wasn't merely digital cash, it was an alternative to banks.

In Part 4, I will cover Satoshi's involvement with the early software development and community or his "Gardening" of bitcoin.