Yes, but there are fundamental design choices that are not intrinsic to cryptocurrency and should award some merit of invention over discovery of Bitcoin. Especially certain parameters like secp256k1. Nearly exclusively used by blockchains, and almost entirely because of Bitcoin.
By this I mean maybe proof-of-work using hash functions is intrinsic, but not SHA256. Immutability of the ledger is intrinsic, but consensus rules can change over time. Likewise with signature schemes - yes, every cryptocurrency from now on will use cryptographic signature but will they be ECDSA?
What Bitcoin is today is a collection of technical decisions made to optimize the security of the network. Conceptually, a project like Bitcoin is absolutely a discovery; analogous to discovering a mountain. Satoshi was the first to climb to its peak; and broadcast, “we got immutability, distributed with incentives!” To all the Byzantine generals. Many others have or are trying to climb that same mountain today. We all can be Satoshi.
Yes, but there are fundamental design choices that are not intrinsic to cryptocurrency and should award some merit of invention over discovery of Bitcoin. Especially certain parameters like secp256k1. Nearly exclusively used by blockchains, and almost entirely because of Bitcoin.
By this I mean maybe proof-of-work using hash functions is intrinsic, but not SHA256. Immutability of the ledger is intrinsic, but consensus rules can change over time. Likewise with signature schemes - yes, every cryptocurrency from now on will use cryptographic signature but will they be ECDSA?
What Bitcoin is today is a collection of technical decisions made to optimize the security of the network. Conceptually, a project like Bitcoin is absolutely a discovery; analogous to discovering a mountain. Satoshi was the first to climb to its peak; and broadcast, “we got immutability, distributed with incentives!” To all the Byzantine generals. Many others have or are trying to climb that same mountain today. We all can be Satoshi.