In 1983, the American cryptographer David Chaum conceived an anonymous cryptographic electronic
money called ecash.Later, in 1995, he implemented it through Digicash, an early form of
cryptographic electronic payments which required user software in order to withdraw notes from a
bank and designate specific encrypted keys before it can be sent to a recipient. This allowed
the digital currency to be untraceable by the issuing bank, the government, or any third party.
In 1996, the NSA published a paper entitled How to Make a Mint: the Cryptography of Anonymous
Electronic Cash, describing a Cryptocurrency system first publishing it in a MIT mailing list
and later in 1997, in The American Law Review (Vol. 46, Issue 4). In 1998, Wei Dai published a
description of "b-money", characterized as an anonymous, distributed electronic cash
system.Shortly thereafter, Nick Szabo described bit gold.Like bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies
that would follow it, bit gold (not to be confused with the later gold-based exchange, BitGold)
was described as an electronic currency system which required users to complete a proof of work
function with solutions being cryptographically put together and published. A currency system
based on a reusable proof of work was later created by Hal Finney who followed the work of Dai
and Szabo. The first decentralized cryptocurrency, bitcoin, was created in 2009 by pseudonymous
developer Satoshi Nakamoto. It used SHA-256, a cryptographic hash function, as its proof-of-work
scheme. In April 2011, Namecoin was created as an attempt at forming a decentralized DNS, which
would make internet censorship very difficult. Soon after, in October 2011, Litecoin was
released. It was the first successful cryptocurrency to use scrypt as its hash function instead
of SHA-256. Another notable cryptocurrency, Peercoin was the first to use a
proof-of-work/proof-of-stake hybrid. On 6 August 2014, the UK announced its Treasury had been
commissioned to do a study of cryptocurrencies, and what role, if any, they can play in the UK
economy. The study was also to report on whether regulation should be considered.