Listening to “What Technology Wants” by Kevin Kelly right now. I had always been on team “Bitcoin was invented”, but now I’m leaning towards “Bitcoin was discovered”.

Of course, the specific parameters of Bitcoin were selected by Satoshi, like the 10 minute block time, the 2 week difficulty readjustment period, the 21 million supply cap, the 4-year halving cycle etc.

But it may have been inevitable that someone would figure out proof-of-work consensus, marry it to a native token, and use these to maintain an immaculate, immutable, public transaction ledger.