Syauqi Al Baana

Ethereum was first mentioned in 2013 in a whitepaper by Vitalik Buterin, a developer who was working on Bitcoin at the time. Buterin believed that Bitcoin should be made more customisable. He believed Bitcoin should go a step further than simply being a store of wealth and that it needed smart contract features to determine automatically when payments should occur, for example. This project was not taken up for Bitcoin, therefore Buterin created Ethereum in 2014 for this purpose. Ethereum pioneered what’s known as an initial coin offering (or ICO), selling to initial investors about 60 million Ether tokens while the project was still in development. This kickstarted a large drive to develop and further promote the Ethereum ecosystem whilst paying for legal fees and development costs. Since then, Ethereum has grown substantially. Multiple other projects have launched, and begun development on the Ethereum platform, with varying degrees of success. " Ethereum pioneered th...

In many ways, Ethereum is similar to Bitcoin. It’s a public, peer-to-peer network or blockchain with its own digital currency called Ether. Ethereum was created by Vitalik Buterin in 2014 and the purpose of Ethereum is to be a platform on which smart contracts can be built and run. Put very simply, Ethereum is intended to be a world computer. Where Bitcoin stores a list of balances and transactions on its blockchain, the Ethereum blockchain is designed to store different types of data. This data can be accessed and used by computer programs running on the Ethereum blockchain. These programs are called decentralized apps, or dapps. Developers around the world can build and run decentralized applications on the Ethereum blockchain. The purpose of these is to improve the industries of finance, personal information storage, governance and more by using the transparent nature of a blockchain. " Ethereum is intended to be a world computer. "

Bitcoin was ‘invented’ by a person or group of people using the name ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’. Does anyone know who this really is? Despite many articles and investigation to unmask the person(s), there is still no conclusive evidence of who they are. Does it matter? Not at all. Satoshi designed the entire Bitcoin system in an ‘open source’ manner - this means the code is available for everyone to inspect and see, so there are no hidden secrets, and no influence on it from the creator. Over time many others have also worked on this code so it’s already very different from the initial outline Satoshi proposed. It’s also worth mentioning that there is a common misconception that Satoshi invented Bitcoin all by himself. Like many big breakthroughs in the sciences, Satoshi’s invention was built on the shoulders of giants. For the past few decades many top scientists, engineers and mathematicians were involved in research around cryptography, systems and so on. Satoshi managed to pull all ...

Many people believe Bitcoin to be very complicated, when in fact it’s a lot more simple and intuitive than what most people think. This series aims to help everyone get a grasp of the basics, and over time also present further learning opportunities for those that want to know more. Bitcoin is often explained by comparing it to something specific people already know, but this is often what creates a lot of confusion. Bitcoin is a new technology that is unlike anything we have seen before, so a better way to think of it is as a combination of a few different things we are already used to: Firstly, because it allows you to move money so easily, Bitcoin functions as a payment system, similar to bank transfers or credit cards, only a bit better. Second, Bitcoin is in some sense similar to gold - that is why many people even refer to it as ‘digital gold’ or ‘Gold 2.0’. Think of it as using gold for money, except it also very easy to move. Third, Bitcoin is like the internet in...