Part 3/9:
To establish a contextual framework, Nakamoto traced the historical antecedents of Bitcoin, beginning with pivotal works in cryptography from the mid-1970s to the late 1990s. He detailed influential papers by cryptographers Whitfield Diffie and Martin Helman, who introduced public key cryptography—a game-changing mechanism that enabled secure, asynchronous communication without prior key exchange.
Further pivotal contributions came from David Chaum's exploration of untraceable electronic mail and transactions. Nakamoto contextualizes these works as not merely cryptographic innovations but as foundational ideas that open the door to privacy and security in the digital economy.