Читать книгу Cryptocurrency All-in-One For Dummies - Peter Kent, Kiana Danial - Страница 75

Compared to Bitcoin, Ethereum is a pretty young currency; Russian-American Vitalik Buterin proposed it in 2013. It’s almost five years younger than Bitcoin, which in the cryptoworld is still a big deal.

Buterin was born in 1994. That’s the year the Cranberries sang their hit song “Zombie” and two years before the Backstreet Boys and Spice Girls became famous. If this math makes you feel old, imagine how Bitcoin’s Satoshi must feel.

Ethereum uses the old Bitcoin’s wisdom and philosophy, but it has a different purpose and capability. According to its website, www.ethereum.org, “Ethereum is a decentralized platform that runs smart contracts.” Chapter 2 of this minibook explains that smart contracts allow people to create agreements without a middleman. Ethereum creates these smart contracts by employing the same blockchain technology as Bitcoin. Just as Bitcoin’s blockchain and network validate Bitcoin ownership, Ethereum’s blockchain validates smart contracts, which the encoded rules execute.