Hey everyone, we’re starting a short series of articles about the history of bitcoin and the events that helped mold it into what it is today. We will take a look at how it started and how it evolved over time. I’m sure we won’t be able to cover every single event, so if you want to contribute, feel free to e-mail us at [email protected] and we will make sure to leave a mention.
2008
Even before the Bitcoin whitepaper is released, www.Bitcoin.org is registered by using a service for anonymous domain registration. It is assumed that Satoshi Nakamoto used a service like www.anonymousspeech.com to register the domain for the website.
A couple of months later, the Bitcoin whitepaper is released through a mailing list, connecting back to www.bitcoin.org, we’ve tracked down the message and you can find it right below:
Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System
Follow the above link if you want to see the message for yourself. We had to cut off most of the content, to focus on the topic at hand.
So, Satoshi releases the Whitepaper and continues on to register the project with SourceForge (which is an open-source community collaboration website, similar to GitHub. As of June 2015 the project has completely been transferred to GitHub.)
2009
Genesis, the first Bitcoin block is mined on January 3rd. The creation of Bitcoin has started. Happy new year? The first 50 Bitcoins to come into existence! Who knew we would get this far. That first block is worth about $36.000 at the time of writing.
Six days later, Bitcoin version 0.1 is released. Anyone can participate from this point onward. It was released as a program for Windows, complied using Visual Studio. Onwards.
Three days later, the first ever Bitcoin transaction is made. It happened in block 170, between Satoshi and Hal Finney, who is both a developer and a cryptographic activist.
There aren’t any meaningful event (that we know of) until later that year, so let’s skip forwards to October 5th 2009, when for the first time an exchange rate is established. This exchange rate was quite ridiculous by today’s standard, but for the time being it was the first time Bitcoin had value when measured against fiat currency. The proposed rate was 1,309.03 BTC = $1 USD. It was generated through an equation that calculated the cost of electricity for one computer to generate Bitcoin.
An IRC channel is created for Bitcoin Development on October 12th, promptly named #bitcoin-dev. As a result of this channel Bitcoin version 0.2 is released two months later, on December 16th.
We end this year with an increase in difficulty for mining Bitcoin. On December 30th, just before the New Year starts, the mining difficulty is increased for the first time in history.
Follow us for the next article, where we will follow Bitcoin’s history from the beginning of 2010 to the end of 2013. Make sure to leave your suggestions and e-mail us at [email protected]
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