So, what is Bitcoin? Perhaps it's best to start with the words of its creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, which we find in the original whitepaper, Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. It states the following:
"A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution. Digital signatures provide part of the solution, but the main benefits are lost if a trusted third party is still required to prevent double-spending. We propose a solution to the double-spending problem using a peer-to-peer network. The network timestamps transactions by hashing them into an ongoing chain of hash-based Proof-of-Work, forming a record that cannot be changed without redoing the Proof-of-Work."
To understand what Satoshi meant with these words,...
