Precursors to Bitcoin

[domob]

I'm working on a research paper about Bitcoin, and would like to give a quick historical introduction into how Bitcoin evolved.  I'm obviously aware of HashCash as a precursor to the PoW-aspect.  Is there also an earlier system that used digital signatures to transfer ownership of "coins"?  My impression so far was that Bitcoin "only" innovated in solving the double-spending problem.  But looking around, I can't really find any earlier system where such a signature scheme was proposed.

I can find Hal Finney's RPOW proposal (although information is not really dense about it), but from what I found, this is more like Chaumian cash in that some central instance is used to issue and redeem tokens.  I appreciate any pointers to earlier ideas that proposed already the signature scheme - if there are any.  Maybe my feeling is just wrong.

[ivanst776]

Precursors to Bitcoin
A reddit user posted a paper written in Feb 2008 (months before Satoshi’s) about double-spends using a P2P distributed network. Another white paper cited the paper, validating its date.
Paper: http://arxiv.org/pdf/0802.0832.pdf

http://bitblotter.tumblr.com/post/79508955548/precursors-to-bitcoin

[omnidoge]

Great piece of research. If you can please update us with your research. It is quite interesting.

[domob]

Great piece of research. If you can please update us with your research. It is quite interesting.

TBH, the actual research is not about precursors - but I want to give a (brief) overview of them if possible.  My paper will be published hopefully soon, though.

[schutzhund]

Great piece of research. If you can please update us with your research. It is quite interesting.

TBH, the actual research is not about precursors - but I want to give a (brief) overview of them if possible.  My paper will be published hopefully soon, though.

That's awesome please do share it in forums i would really like to read something with that depth. Good Luck.

[pereira4]

There were a lot of crypto currency attemps before Bitcoin. Similarly. Litecoin is a copy from Tenebrix and people think its something original.