In general, a whitepaper is an informational document that is usually published by a corporation to promote or highlight the features of a solution, product, or service that the company or organization offers or aims to offer. White papers are also used to promote government policies and legislation to the public and gauge public opinion.

In crypto terms, whitepaper explains a project's purpose and technology. It is a document published by a cryptocurrency project that provides investors with technical information about its concept as well as a roadmap for how it intends to survive and succeed. They typically provide statistics, diagrams, and facts to convince investors to purchase their issued cryptocurrencies.

Check Bitcoin (the first cryptocurrency) whitepaper at
https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

The following were proposed in the Bitcoin whitepaper:
- Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer (P2P) payment system for an online network.
- It eliminates third parties in favor of verification (decentralization)
- All transactions would be final and irreversible.
- It applies a distributed P2P timestamp server. This would produce mathematical proof of the order of various transactions.