Commerce on the Internet has come to rely almost exclusively on financial institutions serving as trusted third parties to process electronic payments. While the system works well enough for most transactions, it still suffers from the inherent weaknesses of the trust based model.
What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party. Transactions that are computationally impractical to reverse would protect sellers from fraud, and routine escrow mechanisms could easily be implemented to protect buyers.
This paper proposes a solution to the double-spending problem using a peer-to-peer distributed timestamp server to generate computational proof of the chronological order of transactions.
The system is secure as long as honest nodes collectively control more CPU power than any cooperating group of attacker nodes.
Read / download the original bitcoin whitepaper here.
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RECOMMENDED READING: Bitcoin 101: A Few Facts About Bitcoin for Beginners
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