And yet the altcoin scammers want to convince everyone that the bitcoin's success is only because it was the "first" one! The reality is that many tried creating similar systems and failed. Bitcoin is successful because it is useful and it uses existing technologies in the right way.
Altcoins are failures because they are useless and have nothing new to offer.
Yes, because the primary tech behind Bitcoin is cryptography which was in development
for many years. The Cypherpunks lead the way or created the foundations with their various
projects like:
1997 – HASHCASH is created by Adam Back and is formally referred to as “"Hashcash - A Denial of Service Counter-Measure"
1998 – BITGOLD is created by Nick Szabo. This was a decentralised digital currency which was never launched.
1998 – B MONEY essay is created by Wei Dai and referenced a type of “proof of work” system to create an anonymous and distributed digital currency.
The next notable leap towards Bitcoins launch came in 2004 when Hal Finney created the first Reusable Proof of Work [RPOW],
an early version of what Bitcoin is based on, Proof of Work [POW].
And all those people had a direct role to play in Bitcoins development