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2008
Event
milestone
The Bitcoin white paper is published
What happened
Satoshi Nakamoto emailed "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System" to the metzdowd cryptography mailing list: "I've been working on a new electronic cash system that's fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party."
Significance
The founding document. Nine pages that specified a working solution to double-spending without a central authority.