Cryptocurrency at glance

While cryptocurrencies were not officially mined until 2009, there were other attempts to establish a digital currency in the years prior. In 1998, two cryptocurrency pioneers, Wei Dai and Nick Szabo, published ideas looking into the possibility of decentralizing currency. Their ideas both revolved around digital currency as a way to replace inefficiencies in the traditional financial system, such as spending money to create paper and coin currency. Though neither idea came to fruition, both Dai and Szabo became early adapters of cryptocurrency more than a decade later. These initial failures became the basis for the first real cryptocurrency — Bitcoin.