Bitcoin History

Public Bitcoin history begins on 18 August 2008, when the domain name bitcoin.org was registered. Later that year on 31 October, a link to a paper authored by mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto titled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”...

Public Bitcoin history begins on 18 August 2008, when the domain name bitcoin.org was registered. Later that year on 31 October, a link to a paper authored by mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto titled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” was posted to a cryptography mailing list. On 3 January 2009, the Bitcoin network came into existence with Satoshi Nakamoto mining the genesis block (block number 0).

The first open source Bitcoin client was released on 9 January 2009. The open source code, showcasing all the characteristic of Bitcoin, made it possible for other cryptocurrencies to emerge. The first Bitcoin transaction took place on 12 January 2009, when Satoshi Nakamoto sent 10 Bitcoins to Hal Finney, one of Bitcoin’s earliest supporters. Another notable transaction was the indirect purchase of two pizzas with 10,000 Bitcoins.

The first and only major Bitcoin security flaw was found on 6 August 2010, and exploited on 15 August. Within hours, the transaction was spotted and erased from the transaction log after the bug was fixed and the network forked to an updated version of the Bitcoin protocol.

Bitcoin price chart:

The main Bitcoin characteristics, such as its security and transparency, carried over to most new cryptocurrencies, who tweaked the rest as they deemed necessary. Some of the best Bitcoin practices stem from blockchain, the technology that underpins it. They are often hailed as revolutionary and many institutions are looking into incorporating them into their own work. Read more about blockchain here.