History of cryptocurrencies
The history of cryptocurrencies, contrary to popular belief, did not begin with Bitcoin. Thus, the history of cryptocurrencies does not begin with the creation of Satoshi Nakamoto. It all began 10 years earlier, in 1998, with a project called “B Money”.

Wei Dai published an article about B Money, talking about an electronic and anonymous payment system. Soon after, the lawyer and cryptography expert Nick Szabo created the project called Bit Gold, the first time that proof of work was presented. Bit Gold disseminated the model on which Bitcoin was based, which consists of encrypting transactions.

Bitcoin, created by the unknown Satoshi Nakamoto, appeared at the end of 2008. Bitcoin, or BTC, emerged as a response to the economic crisis and the neglect of banks. After the creation of BTC, cryptocurrencies became more popular and other projects such as Namecoin and Peercoin emerged. In 2011, Litecoin emerged, a fork of the Bitcoin code base – also known as a hard fork.

In 2014, the so-called second-generation cryptocurrencies emerged. Ethereum, Monero and Nxt came to life. This was when RaiBlocks also emerged, which later became known as Nano, and whose proposal was to solve common problems with Bitcoin. Such problems are the delay in transactions and high cost of fees when the network is being used a lot.

In short, this is the history of cryptocurrencies. Bit Gold created the basis for Bitcoin to be used about a decade later. Then, Bitcoin boosted other projects that became known as altcoins, which in turn helped to boost the popularity of crypto assets.