As mentioned in Chapter 1, the origins of Blockchain can be found in the development of the digital currency, Bitcoin, as outlined in Nakamoto’s 2008 White Paper. In this piece, Nakamoto was developing a new form of payment through digital means. This on its own is not particularly ground-breaking as digital currencies were nothing new at that time. In fact, many of the earliest of them (such as Digicash, for instance) can trace their origins as far back as 1989.1 Like Digicash, Bitcoin relies on cryptography (described by one commentator as ‘the science of scrambling and unscrambling messages so they cannot be read by unintended eyes’)2 in order to maintain user anonymity.3