Too Long; Didn't Read
A recent academic paper <a href="http://www.internetsociety.org/sites/default/files/05_3_3.pdf" target="_blank"><em>“A First Look at the Usability of Bitcoin Key Management</em></a><em>”</em> by Shayan Eskandari, David Barrera, Elizabeth Stobert, and Jeremy Clark of Concordia University, ETH Zurich and Carleton University, has yielded an unexpected gem to anyone interested in the correct technical definition of Bitcoin. In this paper, there is a very precise and vivid description of <em>exactly</em> what Bitcoin is: