Bitcoin: 17 Years Later

Seventeen years ago today, on October 31, 2008, as the financial world was on its knees, shaken by the greatest crisis since 1929, a nine-page document was quietly published on a cryptography mailing list. The author, an enigmatic pseudonym, Satoshi Nakamoto, described a “Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.”

This document, now known as the Bitcoin “white paper,” did not make headlines. The world was busy saving the “too big to fail” banks with public money. Yet, this foundational text was a direct and elegant response to the ambient chaos: a monetary system freed from all central authority, all banks, and all government.

Seventeen years. In the long arc of monetary history, it’s the blink of an eye. In the time of technology, it’s an eternity. Bitcoin’s odyssey during these years is a masterclass in the adoption of disruptive ideas, following a now-classic path: first ignored, then mocked, then fought, Bitcoin is now entering the phase of inevitability.

In a world sinking into a sea of debt, where fiat currency looks more and more like a perishable good, this invention is no longer a simple technological curiosity. It has become a signal. A beacon for those seeking to realign with the necessity of valuing the long term and thinking about the future, rather than the obsession with the present.

Via @sylvain_saurel, on Oct 31, 2025