It’s a big breakthrough in that it solves the Byzantine Generals Problem, which was formulated in 1982. Furthermore, the solution has proven to be extremely robust and resilient to attack over the past 5 years.
By doing this, Bitcoin is the first scaled network where you can transfer (not copy, transfer) a piece of digital property from one person to another with no central authority. This paves the way for a dizzying number of super high value applications such as a fee free stock exchanges, smart contracts that can programmatically be executed and enforced, and many other awesome things.
In addition, by providing a fraud-free, fee free way to transfer cash from one person to another digitally, it opens the world of e-commerce well beyond the 175 countries who don’t yet have modern banking and payment systems.
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