Though the concept of cryptocurrency surfaced in 1998, it took a decade for the idea to materialize into something solid. Bitcoin was proposed in 2008 by Satoshi Nakamoto, a pseudonym for a yet unidentified programmer or a group of such professionals, and introduced in January 2009. The open-source nature of this digital currency means its protocol and software are published openly and any developer around the world can modify them and create their versions.In May 2016, an Australian computer scientist and entrepreneur Craig Wright claimed to be the real person behind the Satoshi Nakamoto pseudonym. However, the bitcoin community and experts cast doubts on his assertion. On June 20 that year, Reuters reported that Wright filed more than 50 patent applications in the U.K. for bitcoin and its “blockchain” technology. Few days prior to this report, an article by journalist and novelist Andrew O'Hagan in the London Review of Books also said that Wright and his associates were planning to file hundreds of such patent applications and planned to rake in more than a billion dollars by selling them as the “blockchain” technology that is fast gaining popularity in the financial world, especially banks.