Bitcoin remains the first cryptocurrency to be recognised, as well as the first cryptocurrency to become successful among the thousands of cryptocurrencies that exist today.
I think your original assertion was correct. The word "cryptocurrency" was first used to describe Bitcoin, and one of a cryptocurrency's core components is the blockchain, which didn't really exist before Bitcoin. Interestingly, this is the first reference to it I can find on the forum (Satoshi didn't use it in the white paper or on the P2P Forum):
Welcome to the Bitcoin Forum and to Satoshi's Bitcoin Project !
You can introduce yourself and ask questions here if you want to.
Please remember that there will only ever be 21,000,000 bitcoins created !
If you decide that the Bitcoin P2P Cryptocurrency is not for you and you have generated bitcoins. Please try to send / donate them to another Bitcoin user before you abandon the project and uninstall the software application.
You can send these donations to NewLibertyStandard or BitcoinFX (myself) or to any other bitcoin address or bitcoin IP which is shown on this forum. Also, try to confirm that the address is still valid and in use.
Thanks.
Regards,
BitcoinFX. ( A fellow Bitcoin user and enthusiast )
This post was written back before BTC really had any value at all.
Here's a reference to it as the first time the term was used in an old discussion:
I think the term "cryptocurrency" will come back to bite us someday, but Satoshi has already used it publicly, it is a coined word with no prior usage, and it works.
Satoshi may have coined "cryptocurrency", and "crypto currency" has been in use for decades.
Finally, here is the first time that Satoshi himself used it (he may have also used it previously on the "old" Bitcoin Forum but I can't find any references to it):
Announcing version 0.3 of Bitcoin, the P2P cryptocurrency! Bitcoin is a digital currency using cryptography and a distributed network to replace the need for a trusted central server. Escape the arbitrary inflation risk of centrally managed currencies! Bitcoin's total circulation is limited to 21 million coins. The coins are gradually released to the network's nodes based on the CPU power they contribute, so you can get a share of them by contributing your idle CPU time.
...