bitcoin imagined by nsa in 1996?

[papamoi]

hi

i came across this today

http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/money/nsamint/nsamint.htm#Conclusion


they ve called it electronic cash at that time

HOW TO MAKE A MINT: THE CRYPTOGRAPHY OF ANONYMOUS ELECTRONIC CASH


what do you think of this?

[DeathAndTaxes]

electronic cash or virtual currency is a pretty only concept.  Computer scientists have been thinking about it going back decades before that report.

What is novel about Satoshi solution is the decentralized network, the use of proof of work (mining) to force a consensus on transaction ordering to solve the double spend problem, and the paying the miners the subsidy of new coins to jump start the network.

The paper doesn't cover any of that. 

[Raize]

Bitcoin is essentially a solution to the Byzantine General's problem. Satoshi came up with a way to develop consensus over a trustless network. This was done by creating a dynamically-varying Proof-of-Work system whereby "miners" come up with solutions to a complicated algorithm and are rewarded for it with the exact token used as the currency itself.

Everything else was postulated and ready to go as far as digital currency was concerned prior to Bitcoin. This paper is just one example of how such a digital currency could be secured, but it still relied on a central server or service which could be targeted.