Digital currency has always been a hotly debated topic. Ever since it was first brought up on the most basic, conceptual level, proponents and detractors have been looking horns. However, as we move towards an ever more digital future, e-currency is becoming more and more widely accepted. It is for that reason that crypto has become a mainstream hit.
The Growing Success of Cryptocurrency
The cryptocurrency phenomenon is not to be underestimated. For a long time, people have been debating whether Bitcoin, Ethereum, and similar coins will go anywhere. In 2020, a lot of folks got their answer, when the price of Bitcoin skyrocketed, and the most popular altcoins soon followed.
Obviously, this had immense ramifications on the digital world. Not only did it attract a lot of people to crypto, but a lot of businesses as well. Suddenly, e-shops began being more open-minded towards crypto transactions. Even land-based businesses started looking into accepting Bitcoin.
Among some of the first businesses to embrace crypto were online casinos, among which, there were those that began operating solely with cryptocurrency. For those who may be interested, Australian Crypto Casinos accept the most trusted and popular cryptos on the market, and let fans play classic games like blackjack, slots, and more.
There is a question to be asked here. Namely, who were the contributors to crypto’s massive success? In all honesty, there isn’t just one person who made the crypto market possible. But, there are certainly some important names that stand above the rest. In this article, we’d like to talk about who the people behind those names are.
Satoshi Nakamoto
Often, crypto enthusiasts hear the name “Satoshi Nakamoto,” and wonder who it is referring to. Well, brace yourselves, because the truth is that the crypto market would not exist had it not been for Satoshi Nakamoto.
In 2008, the world first learned about Bitcoin. At the time, it was purely theoretical. A paper titled Bitcoin: An Electronic Peer-to-Peer Cash System was published online. The writer? Satoshi Nakamoto. A year later, Nakamoto would put his theory to the practice, and even mine the first Bitcoin.
If we were to put it plainly, we would say that without Satoshi Nakamoto, crypto fans today wouldn’t be able to purchase, sell, trade crypto, play at the best BTC casinos online, or use Bitcoin to make transactions when shopping in Starbucks, Whole Foods, and the numerous other businesses that now accept digital coin.
Though the name is legendary in the crypto world, the truth is that nobody knows the face behind the user. You see, Satoshi Nakamoto is a pseudonym. Indeed, we don’t know whether Nakamoto was male, female, Japanese, American, or even if it was one person.
Many have speculated, among them John McAfee, that Nakamoto is actually a fake name created by a group of programmers who came up with the idea mutually. This would, indeed, explain the splits and hard forks that have been numerous throughout Bitcoin’s history.
To this day, nobody has been able to unveil the truth behind Nakamoto. For their part, the Bitcoin creator has abandoned the internet, whether in a quest to stay anonymous, or simply because they’ve grown tired of the spotlight.
Vitalik Buterin
If Bitcoin can be accurately called “the gold of cryptocurrency,” then Ethereum would be the silver. Consistently taking up the second place on the crypto market, Ethereum has endured years as the top two digital coin. And it all began with an idea by Vitalik Buterin.
Buterin, along with a dozen other programmers, co-founded Ethereum, and is the most important name related to the digital currency. It was his idea, and he was the one who named it, apparently taking the name from an old sci-fi magazine.
Ethereum’s success was quick, in part because digital currencies were already growing more popular in the trading world, which is experiencing all sorts of new developments, thanks to things like AI and widely-available trading platforms. However, a huge reason behind Ethereum’s success was the blockchain’s early adoption of NFTs.
Over the years, non-fungible tokens have sort of veined in popularity. They’ve proven rather untrustworthy and unsuccessful. However, in the early years, they were a massive hit, and probably played a role in Ethereum’s popularization.
Changpeng Zhao
Though certainly a controversial figure, we can’t talk about cryptocurrency without bringing up Changpeng Zhao. One of the richest and most-successful men in crypto, Zhao is the co-founder and former CEO of Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange platform.
Though born in China, Zhao moved to Canada when he was 12 years old. He soon discovered a love for computer, technology, and internet culture. He also discovered that he was quite intelligent, and used this fact, along with his passion, to break into the world of cryptocurrency.
The creation of Binance was a huge step forward for crypto. It made crypto trading easily accessible to a huge, worldwide audience. It also established that crypto can be a successful trading asset, comparable to stocks or forex. That certainly would not be possible without Changpeng Zhao.
However, during his stint as the CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao was accused of money laundering, and faced a criminal conviction. He agreed to resign as Binance’s CEO, and plead guilty. He was forced to pay a huge fine, and served four months in prison.
The conviction marred Changpeng Zhao’s stellar reputation in the crypto world, and has made him somewhat of a persona non grata. However, his transgressions do not erase the fact that Zhao’s contribution to the crypto market were hugely important.
Honorable Mention: Hayek
Friedrich Hayek was an early 20th century philosopher, intellectual, and economist, who was among the first to propose the decentralization of currency. Friedrich passed away in 1992, which means his involvement with the world of crypto was non-existent.
However, it was Hayek’s philosophy regarding decentralization that hugely influenced Satoshi Nakamoto, and all of the crypto-developers who were inspired by the anonymous creator of Bitcoin. In a sense, without Hayek, the concept for cryptocurrency would not exist.