Back in 2008, a mysterious person( or team) known as "Satoshi Nakamoto" released a paper of less than ten pages with a very straightforward title — "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System."

What problem does this thing solve? Simply put: how to let strangers transfer money directly online without going through banks, Alipay, or other third-party institutions. Sounds very sci-fi, right? But Satoshi Nakamoto actually made it happen.

The core breakthrough was solving the "double-spending problem" — essentially preventing the same digital currency from being used multiple times. Think about why previous digital currency projects all failed — it all came down to this technical hurdle.

So how does the Bitcoin network operate?
It relies on globally distributed "miners." These participants use high-performance equipment to solve mathematical puzzles, verify the legitimacy of each transaction, and then record the transactions into a public ledger( which is now known as the blockchain). The miners are rewarded with newly minted bitcoins plus transaction fees for their work.

Honestly, the coolest part of this mechanism is: it doesn't require anyone's endorsement, nor does it depend on a company or government. The entire system can operate autonomously. All the hassle of traditional transfers — fees, delays, audits, freezes — are bypassed.

Over the past decade, the influence of that initial paper has far exceeded the scope of currency itself.