0. Introductory note

Welcome to cryptonomy's education section, the real core of our website. The goal of this section is to take an in-depth look at the fundamentals of cryptocurrency, so that we can understand the real value this new technology, now entering our society, has to offer.

This part of cryptonomy is an effort to explain things for a general audience,  where every article we post will also be a chapter of the overall work. The backbone of this effort is the Bitcoin white paper since, as the pioneer, it is the cornerstone of this technology. You can find a translation of the Bitcoin white paper on our website, here.

Also, if you've forgotten a concept, don't worry: we've built a section (complementing the education part of our website) where you can look back and  refresh your memory of the key concepts needed to understand the articles that follow.

The essential question we try to answer is this:

What is blockchain technology, and why could it act as a catalyst for transforming the existing financial model?

We stress that it "could"  act as a catalyst for the existing financial model. At the time of writing, a quick search on CoinGecko using our tools shows there are 8,545 cryptocurrencies on the market.

Each cryptocurrency is said to have its own ecosystem and its own way of solving a problem,  or it is a proposal to improve an existing solution. So blockchain technology appears to have many practical uses. Naturally,  we can't analyze them all. We have therefore chosen to focus on the one aspect it was originally designed for.

In short, the education section is exclusively about blockchain and its relationship with the economic and financial model we have accepted as a society. If you're looking for information on various crypto applications and the solutions they offer for different  problems, you can visit the corresponding section of our website, Coins.

As any academic would say, before getting into the main subject, you should always start with some history. Because, as we know, nothing in science comes out of nowhere, and that was not the case  with  Bitcoin either.

In the next chapter, we'll give a brief history of the core technologies that make up Bitcoin. We'll look at how the internet evolved to make the first attempt at online payments possible,  before Bitcoin. We'll also take a quick look at cryptography and the first cryptocurrencies that appeared before Bitcoin.  In addition, we'll frame the concepts behind blockchain and outline the role of money in our society.

See you there!