On January 3rd, 2009, an anonymous computer programmer (or programmers) going by the name Satoshi Nakamoto mined the first block of the Bitcoin blockchain, kickstarting the world's first fully realized crypto-currency. Satoshi did not build Bitcoin in a vacuum, however. Instead he stood upon the shoulders of cryptographic giants and free software gurus. From Timothy C. May and the Cypherpunks to Richard Stallman, Nick Szabo and beyond, the foundations of Bitcoin were built by a distributed n ...