On this page
The patterns that keep repeating
- Cycles of boom and bust. Hype drives prices up, new projects launch, excess builds, and a crash cleans out the weakest players. Each cycle has left real infrastructure behind.
- The danger of centralization. Mt. Gox and FTX both failed because users trusted a single party with their funds. This drove the self-custody ethos you’ll learn in the Wallets unit.
- Regulation catching up. Each cycle brings clearer rules in some jurisdictions and crackdowns in others.
You can read the original 9-page Bitcoin whitepaper yourself — it’s remarkably approachable. Search "Bitcoin whitepaper pdf" (it’s hosted publicly by bitcoin.org and many others). Reading primary sources is a great habit in crypto.
Go deeper — books for the long version
For a long-form history, the book Digital Gold by Nathaniel Popper covers Bitcoin’s first years in detail, and The Infinite Machine by Camila Russo covers Ethereum’s origins. Both are journalistic, not investment advice.
Many of the events above (Mt. Gox, The DAO, Terra/Luna, FTX, and more) are documented in detail with root causes and aftermath in the Major Hacks & Bad Actors reference page.
Key takeaways
A one-page summary of The History of Cryptocurrency. Print it for quick reference.
- Crypto builds on decades of cypherpunk work trying to make digital money without a trusted middleman.
- Bitcoin (2008 whitepaper, 2009 genesis block) solved the double-spend problem using proof of work.
- Mt. Gox (2014) and FTX (2022) are defining failures — both caused by centralized custody, driving the self-custody ethos.
- Ethereum (2015) added smart contracts; DeFi summer (2020) and NFTs (2021) expanded use cases.
- The space moves in boom-and-bust cycles; each cycle leaves real infrastructure behind.
Unit check
80% to complete this unitPass the unit check (4 of 5) to complete this unit.