Bitcoin's Pioneering Era

Description

Take a trip to the Wild West of finance

Welcome to this course devoted to the history of Bitcoin between spring 2011 and summer 2012! Although you may have heard of this period from time to time, due to the tragic fate of Silk Road and Mt. Gox, it's likely that you're not familiar with it, as Bitcoin was still largely ignored by the general public and users were few and far between at the time. This course is therefore an opportunity for you to familiarize yourself with the pioneering, community-based era of cryptocurrency history that shaped Bitcoin. You'll learn in detail about the events, characters, marketplaces, financial services and software projects that shaped it.

In particular, the period from spring 2011 to summer 2012 was characterized by an attitude of distrust among the involved actors and a virtually total absence of financial regulation, to the point that we refer to it here as the "Wild West of finance". It was a period of freedom and diversity, during which many sometimes zany projects sprang up, which were more or less successful, but generally aimed at improving the use of Bitcoin. Although short (barely a year and a half), it was a phase of learning and construction, full of "firsts" and experiments that later became fundamental elements of Bitcoin's technical, economic and cultural structure.