Bitcoin emerged in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, when trust in banks and government policies had eroded. On October 31, 2008, someone using the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto released the whitepaper "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System." It outlined a new form of money—decentralized digital cash that moves peer-to-peer without financial intermediaries. The whitepaper showed how cryptography, game theory, and networking could create a secure, decentralized currency. It introduced a public ledger maintained by network nodes and secured by miners using Proof-of-Work (PoW). These concepts solved long-standing digital money issues, such as double spending, and became the blueprint for decentralized finance.