A developer or team of developers using the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto publishes a white paper that conceptualises the cryptocurrency bitcoin , and establishes the blockchain as the public transaction ledger used for bitcoin . This lit the flame for the cryptocurrency market , which would explode over the next decade .

Five years after the white paper was published , early bitcoin enthusiast Vitalik Buterin would create Ethereum . He thought bitcoin needed a scripting language for application development and , failing to establish a consensus among the bitcoin community , built his own blockchain-based platform . It utilises smart contracts and is the platform on which NFTs are built , for example .

Businesses begin exploring the full potential of the blockchain and , with this in mind , blockchain is separated from the currency to allow more applications to take shape . This kickstarts the period known as ‘ Blockchain 2.0 ’, which instead of applying decentralisation to currency could see infinite possibilities in business instead where authentication , rights or ownership are at issue .

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