It has been described as a "techno tour de force" by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, and as a "remarkable cryptographic achievement…that has enormous value" by Google CEO, Eric Schmidt. It was even predicted by Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman in 1999 when he said, "The one thing that's missing, but will soon be developed, is a reliable e-cash."

Friedman was a visionary, and in this instance he was a decade ahead of the rest, foreseeing the advent of digital currency, and more specifically, bitcoin.

Bitcoin's rise to prominence is causing a global rethink of the concept of money. For thousands of years, gold was the currency of the land, and many of gold's qualities have allowed it to stand the test of time. As civilization developed and industrialized, ruling bodies learned that printing a government's own currency, called fiat, was a more convenient and easier method of distributing wealth in society.

However, government-backed money has not stood the test of time; the average life of fiat currency is only 27 years. History is littered with examples of the failure of money, such as the Mark in post-WWI Weimar Germany and the Greek drachma in 1944.