No! True to its name, Thunderbolt is lightning fast. At 40 Gbit/s, Thunderbolt 3 is twice as fast as Thunderbolt 2 and four times as fast as Thunderbolt 1. ... Because although USB-C connectors are now used, a USB-C cable is not a Thunderbolt 3 cable! Thunderbolt 3 cables can be recognised by the lightning symbol on the plug. It's almost the same as a plug but different in terms of data transfer.

No. Thunderbolt was developed by Intel & Apple and was already able to transfer up to 20 GB/s with version 2 in 2013. It can be found on various Macs from 2013 - 2015.
With Thunderbolt 3 (40 GB/s), the connector became compatible with USB-C.