These days, bitcoin is front-page news, as its price’s vertiginous ups and downs elicit glee and despondency by turns among investors. It was not always this way: the now-definitely-in-a-bubble cryptocurrency is making a comeback following years in which its association with crime and darknet drug markets kept it away from the spotlight. During that period, technologists and corporate evangelists had stopped touting the qualities of bitcoin, turning instead to a technology that underpinned the cryptocurrency without being tainted by dodgy connections: blockchain.
The blockchain was born as the digital scaffolding for cryptocurrency transactions. When devising bitcoin, pseudonymous inventor Satoshi Nakamoto’s aim was to create a stateless virtual currency, not controlled by any bank or government.
It’s never the first generation of a technology that delivers the hit, always the second – or the third
