Most of the time novelties are introduced by incumbents ; less frequently , entrepreneurs working by themselves come up with a technological breakthrough . Bitcoin was completely different . In a concise , mysterious paper from 2009 the world ’ s first real cryptocurrency was presented for the first time . The author of the paper was Satoshi Nakamoto . Despite vivid speculation to this day , nobody knows the real identity behind this pseudonym . It is not even known whether it is one person or a group of people who wrote the paper . There was also no company behind it , no classic business case as you would expect . The motivation behind the world ’ s first real cryptocurrency was ideological , rather than monetary . The idea was to create an alternative financial system and to get rid of banks and any other incumbent financial institution . 10 years later we have come a long way from that idea – technologically as well as ideologically .