Bitcoin Brought Us a New World We Could Have Only Imagined

Mike Belshe is the co-founder and CEO of BitGo.

This exclusive opinion piece is part of CoinDesk’s “Bitcoin at 10: The Satoshi White Paper” series.

In the 10 years since the bitcoin white paper was released, our understanding of the world around us has changed.

The introduction of a global, digital currency that can exist without a central authority opened our eyes to the possibilities of money – that it can be different from what we’ve known. As a community, we’re now wiser to the opportunities for a digital economy and discovered what it means to act as your own bank – and it’s incredibly liberating.

It’s also remarkable that this shift has occurred in just a decade.

I’ll admit that the first time I read the white paper I was skeptical. Some of the issues mentioned, like double spending, hadn’t registered as problems that needed solving before. The complicated labyrinth of miners, nodes, block rewards, and proof-of-work made the network seem implausible.

The second time I…