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Most people think Bitcoin was the beginning of cryptocurrency. It wasn’t.

Decades before Bitcoin, digital cash already existed — real cryptographic money, used by real people, through real banks.

In this first part of a five-episode deep-dive series, we go back to the origins of digital money and tell the story of DigiCash and David Chaum — a privacy-focused system that proved digital cash could work years before Bitcoin, but ultimately failed for reasons that still matter today.

This episode isn’t about hype, price predictions, or revisionist history. It’s about understanding why early digital money collapsed, what structural weaknesses held it back, and how those failures quietly shaped everything that came next. By the end, you’ll see Bitcoin not as a sudden invention, but as the final outcome of decades of trial, error, and hard lessons.

Leave your thoughts in the comments, hit follow if you’re new, and join us tomorrow as we continue the series and explore the cypherpunk ideas — including Hashcash, b-money, and bit gold — that nearly changed the world.

We will see you at the top.

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