Tuesday marks nine years since Satoshi Nakamoto announced the creation of the Bitcoin “Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.”

The Bitcoin whitepaper, still available on the same Bitcoin.org domain as it was in October 2008, offers an increasingly fascinating view into the niche project which in October 2017 has a market cap of over $100 bln. The document famously begins:

“A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.”

“Digital signatures provide part of the solution, but the main benefits are lost if a trusted third party is still required to prevent double-spending. We propose a solution to the double-spending problem using a peer-to-peer network.”

Those networks are now used by three mln users every day, with that number expected to increase to 200 mln within just seven years projections state.

This year’s anniversary is especially timely as Bitcoin reaches new all-time highs without a hint of serious price corrections.

Oct. 31 this year is also significant for other reasons, the date marking the deadline by which China’s domestic market exchanges must cease providing Bitcoin-to-fiat trading.

While those traders have since migrated to alternatives, the mood both inside and outside the multibillion-dollar cryptocurrency industry is that Bitcoin is here to stay and will come out stronger as a result of competition from copies - Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin Silver and SegWit2x.