The 10 years of bitcoin in key dates

Related financial instrument : BITCOIN
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Bitcoin, the first cryptocurrency, which appeared in 2008, celebrated its 10th anniversary during the summer of 2018. Let’s take a look back at the dates which marked the history of Bitcoin as we hear more and more about this cryptocurrency and it continues to arouse curiosity due to its high level of volatility.

18th August 2008: Purchase of the site bitcoin.org



An anonymous person reserved the domain name: bitcoin.org.
The domain name was purchased via AnonymousSpeech, a platform that allows anonymous transactions.

31st October 2008: Publication of the Bitcoin project’s white paper



On 31st October 2008, a person named"Satoshi Nakamoto" published a message in an e-mail mailing list reserved for cypherpunks, a movement of people using cryptography to protect privacy. He wrote: "I am working on a new electronic money system entirely peer-to-peer, without trusted third parties". This text was accompanied by a link that pointed to the Bitcoin.org site which hosted the bitcoin White Paper.

9th November 2008: First use of the word "blockchain"



More and more people became interested in the Bitcoin project and contacted Satoshi Nakamoto. In these exchanges, Hal Finney, a cryptographer who helped create PGP, the world's most widely used email encryption software, used the term "blockchain" for the first time to talk about the registry distributed at the heart of Bitcoin technology. Initially, Satoshi Nakamoto called it a "timestamp server".

3rd January 2009: The first Bitcoins were created



On this date, the “genesis block" was created. This was the name given to the very first block in the Bitcoin blockchain.
The following text was included in this first block: "Chancellor on brink of second bail out for banks."

This text was also the headline of that day's Times daily newspaper referring to the banks bailout by the British government.

The Times Bitcoin
The first 50 bitcoins issued under this first block were never sent to anyone. A priori, only Satoshi Nakamoto had the cryptographic key to move them.

It should also be noted that the first bitcoin transfer took place on 12th January 2009. A Bitcoin transfer between Satoshi Nakamoto and Hal Finney.

5th October 2009: First Bitcoin valuation



The first value given to Bitcoin did not come from a place of purchase nor an exchange of a fiat currency for Bitcoins. The first value of Bitcoin was determined by the cost of the electricity production required to create a unit by a computer. At this time, the computing power required to validate a block was not very high and a simple basic computer was able to do it. Thus, the first Bitcoin value was set at US$0.001.

22nd May 2010: 10,000 bitcoins for 2 pizzas



It’s a funny story when you know Bitcoin’s future evolution. On 22nd May 2010, the American developer Laszlo Hanyecz used 10,000 bitcoins to buy two pizzas. No one had ever used Bitcoins to buy real property before. Laszlo Hanyecz then left a message on the Bitcoin Talk forum "I'll pay 10,000 bitcoins for a couple of pizzas.. like maybe 2 large ones so I have some left over for the next day [...] If you're interested please let me know and we can work out a deal.”
Four days later, Laszlo Hanyecz thanked a British user who ordered two pizzas by calling the Papa John restaurant in Jacksonville, Florida. For proof, he published this photo as evidence:
pizza paid in bitcoin Laszlo Hanyecz
12th December 2010: Satoshi Nakamoto disappeared

On the specialized forum Bitcoin Talk, Satoshi Nakamoto announced his withdrawal from the project. He declared that he would hand over to the American developer Gavin Andresen by entrusting him with the protocol’s warning key. This key instantly sends a message to all computers in a system node.

February 2011: Bitcoin was at parity against the US dollar



The day that Bitcoin was officially listed for the first time at US$1.
1 BTC = 1 USD

15th June 2011: WikiLeaks bypassed US sanctions with Bitcoin



On 15th June 2011, following pressure from the US on Visa, MasterCard and PayPal to block transfers to WikiLeaks, the originator of confidential US military documents publication in Iraq and Afghanistan, the NGO WikiLeaks officially announced on Twitter that it would now accept donations in Bitcoin.

March 2013 - Cypriots bought Bitcoins to preserve their savings



Cypriot banks reopened their doors after 12 days of closure. The introduction of strict capital controls led some Cypriot savers to turn to Bitcoin. In parallel, this event was followed by a bubble in the United States, causing a price explosion: Bitcoin then crossed the bar of US$300 to plunge a few sessions later to US$40. The cryptocurrency market then recorded its first crash.

2nd October 2013: Silk Road site closure



Hosted on the Darknet, Silk Road was used to buy and/or sell all kinds of illegal products (drugs, weapons, etc.). Exchanges were made using Bitcoins so that transactions remained anonymous. The owner of the site, Ross Ulbricht, a 29-year-old American libertarian, was arrested in a library in San Francisco. He was sentenced to life in prison in 2015. Today, many sites are inspired by Silk Road. Dream Market is currently the best known.

28th November 2013: Bitcoin reaches US$1,000



On this date, 1 BTC = 1000 USD

February 2014: MtGox went bankrupt



On 28th February, MtGox, the world's leading platform for buying and selling bitcoins, went bankrupt following piracy that led to the theft of 650,000 bitcoins.

August 2015: The ecosystem leaves New York



In New York, where most of the trading platforms were located, the city announced the creation of the "BitLicense", a kind of license to practice. The conditions for obtaining it were considered too draconian (cost of entry, level of capital, traceability of users, etc.) by a large part of the sector which chose to leave the capital of world finance to settle in California or in tax havens.

May 2016 - Craig Wright claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto



On 2nd May 2016, Craig Wright, an Australian computer scientist, proclaimed himself the creator of Bitcoin.

End 2016: The war of block sizes



The developers were roused by a debate: should they increase the size of the Bitcoin protocol blocks so as to generate more transactions?
Increasing the size of blocks or alternative solutions, the debate divided the developer community. This later led the Bitcoin to multiple HardForks.

August 2017: Hard Fork Bitcoin Cash



The community could not agree and minority supporters for increasing the size of the blocks created a "hard fork", i.e. they created a distinct path to the Bitcoin blockchain while retaining its history. This new protocol is known as "Bitcoin Cash".

December 2017: Bitcoin futures contracts launched



The first Bitcoin futures contracts were launched on 10th December 2017. Speculators then had the opportunity to trade Bitcoin whether the market was rising or falling.

17th December 2017: Historic Bitcoin record



Bitcoin reached a high of US$19,891.

First half 2018: Cryptocurrency crash



Click here to learn more.
- Bitcoin and cryptocurrency crash: February 2018
- Will there soon be an end to cryptocurrency crashes?

August 2018: Launch of Bitcoin ETFs?



Awaiting the SECs decision

And so on...

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