I heard about Bitcoin a few years ago and was captivated by it immediately. Bitcoins were worth a few dollars, and I was quite thrilled to be able to even buy something with them. The price went up to over $1000,–. Alternative coins we’re popping up, and people started wondering why you’d want to use money that isn’t backed by a central bank. The focus was on Bitcoin as an alternative form of money - or currency in slightly more legally accepted terms. Bitcoin becoming a new world-money did not take off, the price went down again. But instead of going into oblivion people start focusing on the technology behind Bitcoin, the blockchain. Shortly, the idea was that Bitcoin may be irrelevant, its technology is. Of course, as people quickly realized, using any decentralized system requires some decentralized currency, or more general a token to go around. And why get a new currency accepted when there’s already one that’s well accepted and known?