Maybe it wasnt the first to come up with this kind of idea;
...but it was the first to come up with a
solution! ☞
☞That is to say, Bitcoin might not be the first digital currency but it's the first cryptocurrency (ie. the first decentralized, counterfeit-proof digital currency).
It's easy to forget these days how big of a deal this was, but there's no precedent for this kind of money before Bitcoin.
The first to really capitalise on the market I would say. Since, eCash, although being very different from Bitcoin of today was a concept back in the 1980s, which I think was implemented into Digicash? As far as I know, this is the very foundations to what we now call cryptocurrencies, and its interesting to me that the concept was thought of many years ago. I'm not sure of the success of eCash, or Digicash, but I believe Bitcoin is the closest thing we've had that uses similar ish concepts that has garnered the interest of the mainstream media.