Estonia publishes the Bitcoin whitepaper on their official website

The very famous Bitcoin whitepaper, written by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008, has been published on the official website of the Estonian government.

This is the so-called e-residency website.

E-resident.gov.ee is the government website of the Estonian digital nation. In fact, since 2014 Estonia has been offering foreign citizens the possibility of obtaining a ‘digital residence’ in the country, thanks to which it is possible to have a digital identity issued by the Estonian state, similar to that provided to citizens physically resident in the country.

Thanks to e-residency, foreign citizens provided with the Estonian digital identity can use the services provided by both the State Agency and the private sector. 

For several years now, Estonia has been focusing on innovation and technological development, and in the past few years even considered creating its own cryptocurrency, the so-called Estcoin. However, in the end it was forced to give up because of its membership of the Eurozone. 

Despite this, it has continued to offer services to crypto companies, becoming one of the few countries where they are well accepted. 

Why has Estonia published the Bitcoin whitepaper

On the page of its official website where the Bitcoin whitepaper was published, Estonia claims to be a blockchain pioneer, as it has long been using a blockchain technology called “Keyless Signature Infrastructure” to ensure the integrity of government data and systems. 

“Since that time, we have seen a global rise in the demand for ways to enable trust in cross-border business transactions, be it with the Bitcoin architecture introduced by Satoshi Nakamoto’s whitepaper, or with the world’s first concept for e-Residency launched by Estonia in 2014”.

At this point, it states that it intends to preserve Bitcoin’s original whitepaper on its website as a source of inspiration for future innovators looking to understand how to use blockchain technology to facilitate cross-border business and other applications. 

This is the first time ever that a government website has hosted this celebrated whitepaper, and it is possible that this initiative is a direct response to Craig Wright’s misguided attempt to copyright this paper, which he has never proven to be the author of. It will be interesting to see whether Wright will now also sue the Estonian government, or whether he will overlook it.