Whois & Analysis for cointelegraph.com

Bitcoin is both a cryptocurrency and an electronic payment system invented by an unidentified programmer, or group of programmers, under the name of Satoshi Nakamoto.

Bitcoin was introduced on 31 October 2008 to a cryptography mailing list, and released as open-source software in 2009.

The identity of Nakamoto remains unknown, though many have claimed to know it.

A cryptocurrency (or crypto currency) is a digital asset designed to work as a medium of exchange using cryptography to secure the transactions and to control the creation of additional units of the currency.

Cryptocurrencies are a subset of alternative currencies, or specifically of digital currencies.

Ethereum is an open-source, public, blockchain-based distributed computing platform featuring smart contract (scripting) functionality.

It provides a decentralized Turing-complete virtual machine, the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which can execute scripts using an international network of public nodes.

Ethereum also provides a value token called "ether", which can be transferred between participants and is used to compensate participant nodes for computations performed.

Gas, an internal transaction pricing mechanism, is used to prevent spam on the network and allocate resources proportionally to the incentive offered by the request.

A blockchain – originally block chain – is a distributed database that maintains a continuously growing list of ordered records called blocks.

Each block contains a timestamp and a link to a previous block.

By design, blockchains are inherently resistant to modification of the data — once recorded, the data in a block cannot be altered retroactively.

Through the use of a peer-to-peer network and a distributed timestamping server, a blockchain database is managed autonomously.

Blockchains are "an open, distributed ledger that can record transactions between two parties efficiently and in a verifiable and permanent way.

The ledger itself can also be programmed to trigger transactions automatically.".

Cryptography or cryptology (from Greek kryptós, "hidden, secret"; and graphein, "writing", or -logia, "study", respectively) is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties called adversaries.

More generally, cryptography is about constructing and analyzing protocols that prevent third parties or the public from reading private messages; various aspects in information security such as data confidentiality, data integrity, authentication, and non-repudiation are central to modern cryptography.

Modern cryptography exists at the intersection of the disciplines of mathematics, computer science, and electrical engineering.

Applications of cryptography include ATM cards, computer passwords, and electronic commerce.