Barter to Blockchain

Abstract

In childhood, I heard many stories from my legendary grandfather about how certain people created immense amount of wealth in a short time, of course in an honest way, and then more importantly how they kept it all safe. While most little girls of my age were fascinated by fairytale stories, I found wealth creation ideas much more alluring and a means to be a powerful someone someday later in life. With time I came to know I was not the only one in this game. People in all ages and all times have ceaselessly thought over this puzzle of “creating wealth,” “securing it,” and “trading or investing for larger returns.” Be it gold, spices, cattle, slaves, land, or oil, wealth has many different forms and there are inherent flaws when it comes to trading in wealth. In this chapter, let’s discuss some of the different forms of money and figure out how this journey finally culminated in Bitcoin and Blockchain, one of the biggest technical inventions of the 21st century.