Before #Bitcoin, there was #Ecash.

David Chaum’s #Digicash, built on blind signatures, was one of the first serious attempts at true digital cash. At one point, there were even rumours that Microsoft and Visa were seriously interested, and several Cypherpunks went to work at Digicash to help push the tech forward.

But Ecash never really went mainstream.

Usage stayed low. Some said there wasn’t enough demand for digital cash yet. Others felt Chaum didn’t have the business skills to scale it into the wider financial world.

By 1997, after leadership changes and a move to Silicon Valley, Digicash filed for bankruptcy.

Still, its impact was huge.

It proved to a whole generation of hackers, cryptographers, and privacy activists that digital cash was technically possible. The idea worked – it just needed a different architecture and a different moment in time. Bitcoin would eventually be both.

We captured this moment in The History of Bitcoin by Smashtoshi with the artwork:

“SEEING THE VALUE OF BLIND SIGNATURES” by Jack Kaido (thisjackkaido).

It appears in the Collector’s Book and on our interactive timeline.

Read the full article by Aaron van Wirdum: