Bitcoin is historical. This is the first time in history that a truly decentralized, censorship-resistant, immutable, borderless, permissionless, and incorruptible monetary system with an absolute hard cap (21 million coins) has ever been created.

Bitcoin is as significant to decentralizing power and increasing financial inclusion, as the invention of the printing press, and later the World Wide Web, was to decentralizing control of, and increasing access to, information.

A lot of people automatically dismiss e-currency as a lost cause because of all the companies that failed since the 1990's. I hope it's obvious it was only the centrally controlled nature of those systems that doomed them. I think this is the first time we're trying a decentralized, non-trust-based system.

~ Satoshi Nakamoto 2009-02-15