The Serendipitous Birthplace of Bitcoin

I was born and raised in Morristown, NJ, a small town where my parents settled in the late ’80s. In 1991, I was born at Morristown Memorial Hospital, just a stone’s throw from the modest two-story colonial where I spent my childhood. It was a typical suburban life – quiet, simple, and familiar. But little did I know, just minutes from my home, a revolutionary idea was taking shape.

It wasn’t until recently that I realized how close I was to the birthplace of a concept that would change the world: Bitcoin.

In October 2008, the original Bitcoin whitepaper was published, and it referenced the work of two researchers, Haber and Stornetta, no fewer than three times. One of those citations was for their 1991 paper, “How to Time-Stamp a Digital Document”, a foundational text in cryptography. And that paper? It was written just minutes from where I grew up.

Haber and Stornetta’s groundbreaking idea was simple yet profound: a system to time-stamp digital documents in a way that made tampering impossible. A decentralized, distributed log that anyone could verify. At the time, it was revolutionary. Little did they know, their work would lay the foundation for what would eventually become Bitcoin.