Before the 2008 financial crisis, the term "crypto assets" was primarily the preserve of a minority of computer scientists and engineers experimenting with new technologies as a means of decentralizing finance. They subsequently launched the first projects involving blockchain, but it was the white paper on Bitcoin by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008 that introduced crypto assets as an area of interest for investors and financial institutions with higher risk appetites. The wider public followed shortly afterward and, later, regulators.