Select what genuinely interests you. Your picks feed directly into our editorial planning. The Bitcoin whitepaper is a nine-page document titled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”, published on October 31, 2008 by a person or group using the name Satoshi Nakamoto. In twelve short sections it describes how digital money can work without a bank: an open network of computers puts all payments into a fixed order, and computing work ensures that nobody can falsify that order after the fact. Every single bitcoin you buy, hold or send today still rests on these nine pages.