Except everyone involved in Bitcoin's creation was aware of about 20 years of precedent and discussion about these kinds of issues -- http://cypherpunks.venona.com/ -- so it wasn't really hindsight
Not everything (hashcash, some of Wei Dai's stuff, etc.) -- but I was more referring to how to do tests/proofs in mutually-distrustful environments, not the protocols themselves.
Bitcoin was exceptional in a lot of ways -- most importantly, getting traction! -- decentralization, the ramping up, etc.
I'm interested in more of your perspective here. I was around back in the Mojo Nation era as something of an observer, but there's lots maybe I didn't see.
The good stuff was always buried deeply on threads, and mainly pre 1996. I should do something better with the archives to pull out the specific good stuff.
