In October of 2008, amidst a global recession resulting in government bailouts of the banking system, a white paper was released under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto titled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. The paper summarized a confluence of technologies that, when combined, created the first successful form of digital money. These technologies were the product of 4 decades of attempts and failures to create digital money — below is a list of about 100 failed attempts: {table} PayPal is on that list — their original idea was cryptographic payments on hand-held devices. They were not able to execute on ... (full story)