
A Brief History of Blockchain - hunglee2
https://hbr.org/2017/02/a-brief-history-of-blockchain
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_nalply
The zeroth innovation is a Proof of Work implementation: HashCash [1],
invented 1997. After all we stand on shoulders of giants.

[1]: [http://www.hashcash.org/](http://www.hashcash.org/)

Edit: Added an explanation.

HashCash was an idea to thwart spam by forcing spammers to do work. It works
similar to Bitcoin's Proof of Work: Use a nonce and hash the text together
with a nonce. Does the hash start with some zeroes like this:
0000bbab945399d0f80395c65e2ba4c93c89ada8? You are done. Else retry with a
different nonce. So if the spammer's computer has to calculate HashCash for
about one or two seconds for each e-mail, he won't be able to send millions of
them. That was the idea.

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Uptrenda
History lesson number one: the word "blockchain" isn't a pronoun. Seriously,
if you don't even know that it tells me you joined the blockchain bandwagon
some time in 2015 or later which is when journalists who also didn't know shit
about the technology started misusing the word (as if it were "email" or
something.)

If a person starts talking to me about "blockchain" and how "blockchain" is
going to change the future I just instantly lose respect for them. Maybe this
is petty of me but I do find it frustrating.

~~~
cocktailpeanuts
This is like saying "Google" is not a verb. People always find ways to evolve
usage of words in different ways, and that's the beauty of human language.

However I do agree with you on how it's annoying these people (not just
journalists but startup investors and entrepreneur wannabes) who just learned
about Bitcoin (probably never used them but just read it on a blog post or a
book) and keep saying Bitcoin sucks but blockchain will change everything.

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mustafabisic1
Thanks for the article man. Where do YOU see it going in the future? The
article is just brushing on that question.

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0x006A
fourth and fifth innovation are speculations about the future not history

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Hydraulix989
Grammar error in title?

