Sure. Whitepaper was released in 2008. Genesis block was in 2009.
In 2007 we had Combating Double-Spending Using Cooperative P2P Systems[0]. Prior to both the whitepaper and the genesis block, we had Distributed Double Spending Prevention[1].
These are all particular subsets of distributed consensus problems, which have been studied in the context of CS for at least 30+ years (Consensus in the Presence of Partial Synchrony[2]).
I think it depends on what you consider to be the first such system.
The earliest ones I personally recall using were Liberty Reserve and E-Gold, which were basically fine, I guess. It was a good way to send money around with less eyes on it. Before that there were things like DigiCash, but I don't know much about that one. There was a whole bunch of random ones during the 90s, but most of them were ponzis and rugpulls (some things never change).
In my opinion, BTC took off in a way that others didn't for a bunch of reasons:
1) It was the first usable system that was decentralized, AFAIK. This is a pretty desirable characteristic, of course.
2) It had (and has) flaws, but there was no obvious means of it being a rug-pull or complete scam. E.g., it wasn't supposedly backed by gold/silver/whatever that didn't really exist.
3) You were able to get some bitcoin to use for 'free' by mining. Prior systems you had to buy into. The threshold to participate and profit was much lower.
4) The protocol is simple enough for those first few points to be trivial to verify.
5) It entered a sort of 'spiral' relationship with darknet markets and more general cybercrime. As those surged in popularity, the demand for bitcoin surged, which fueled interest in bitcoin, which fueled interested in markets, which.. etc.
