We heard about Bitcoin for the very first time in 2008. A book titled “Bitcoin: a Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”, written by the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto (his identity is still unknown), is published. Through a mixture of earlier inventions, he creates an electronic coin totally decentralised whose security relies on a very expensive computational system known as Proof of Work, to have a shared consensus.
THE BITCOIN CHRONICLE
This is a short insight to go through the main developments in the Bitcoin history. We are now celebrating its tenth anniversary!
18th AUGUST AND 31st OCTOBER 2008: THE DAWN OF HISTORY
bitcoin.org was born. The web domain was registered anonymously. It describes the ecosystem linked to Bitcoin and the book “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” is published.
3rd JANUARY 2009: THE GENESIS BLOCK
This is considered the official birth of Bitcoin. Genesis Block, which is the initial block of the blockchain used to start the cryptocurrency, is mined:
blockstream.info/block/000000000019d6689c085ae165831e934ff763ae46a2a6c172b3f1b60a8ce26f
A historical moment that we do need to remember.
JANUARY 2009
Version 0.1 of Bitcoin software is released. It includes the generation of the 21 million Bitcoins available that will travel through the web until 2040. After just a couple of days, the first transaction using only Bitcoins happens, inside block 170.
OCTOBER – DECEMBER 2009
An exchange rate of Bitcoin – US$ is finalised. The exchange rate is US$1 = 1,309.03 BTC.
Difficulties with the resolution of Proof-of-Work start to get tougher.
2010
FEBRUARY | dwdollar creates the first Bitcoin Market Exchanger.
MAY | The first transaction in the real world happens. Laszlo Hanyecz, in Florida, offers 10000 BTC for a pizza.
JULY | ArtForz devises OpenGL GPU farm and generates its first Bitcoin block. It is the first time ever that GPU is used for block mining.
AUGUST | First big Exploit to the Bitcoin network. Through a bug, 184 billions Bitcoin are generated in a transaction – which is later resolved.
NOVEMBER | Bitcoin market cap surpasses $1 million.
DECEMBER | First time for a Bitcoin transaction to be made using a mobile.
2011
JANUARY | Silk Road opens an illegal Bitcoin marketplace to sell drugs. BTC origination reaches 25%.
FEBRUARY | Bitcoin and US$ have now the same value.
GIUGNO | allinvain, a member of the Bitcoin forum, reports a theft of 25.000 BTC from his wallet – this will be the biggest bitcoin theft ever reported.
AUGUST | New York hosts the first conference about Bitcoin.
2012
FEBRUARY | Bitcoin Magazine is born.
JUNE | Coinbase is created in San Francisco. It is a community to exchange digital goods.
JULY | A Bitcoin startup incubator is born.
SEPTEMBER | Bitcoin Foundation is funded and they have a team of developers who are in charge of the Bitcoin Protocol. Bitcoin Foundation is a no-profit organisation which aims at making Bitcoin a globally accepted exchanging method without having to engage with third-party providers.
NOVEMBER | Rewards are halved for the very first time due to a block mining. 50 BTC are now 25 BTC with block 210000.
2013
MARCH | A Hard Fork (a divergence in the permanent blockchain) takes place within Blockchain. This is due to a bug – which will be later solved. The value of BTC is now $74,90 – Bitcoin market cap reaches $1 billion.
MAY | Coindesk is created – a news website about Bitcoin. The first Bitcoin ATM is placed in San Diego, California.
AUGUST | Bitcoin is legally declared a currency bu Judge Amos Mazzant, in Texas.
NOVEMBER | BTC price exceeds $1000. Bitcoin moves more currency than Western Union. Cyprus University starts accepting Bitcoin payments.
DECEMBER | The People’s Bank of China bans Bitcoin transactions, causing a fall of the cryptocurrency value.
2014
FEBRUARY | MtGox, one of the most influential Bitcoin exchangers, shuts down, after a large cyber attack.
DECEMBER | Microsoft starts accepting payments in Bitcoin to buy Xbox games and Windows software.
2015
FEBRUARY | The number of retailers who accept Bitcoin is more than 100000.
OCTOBER | A proposal to the Unicode Consortium (a no profit entity whose aim is to develop, maintain and promote standards for the software internationalisation) is made in order to have the Bitcoin symbol added.
2016
MARCH | The Japanese Cabinet affirms that cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin have a similar function of real currencies.
JULY | Rewards are halved again – another mining of a block. 25 BTC are now 12.5 with block 420000.
SEPTEMBER | Bitcoin ATMs are now 771, all over the world.
2017
MARCH | Projects on GitHub related to Bitcoin are more than 10000.
JUNE | Bitcoin symbol is codified in Unicode with the position: U+20BF.
AUGUST | Bitcoin is separated into two cryptocurrencies with two blockchains. The first one is BTC chain and its blocks have a limit of 1 MB. The second one is BitCoin Cash (BCH), whose blocks are limited to 8 MB. The fork is called Bitcoin Cash hard fork.
NOVEMBER | There is a second Bitcoin hard fork: it’s called Bitcoin Gold.
DECEMBER | Bitcoin reaches its historical value of $19783.
2018
JANUARY | South Korea ends Bitcoin anonymous trades. Facebook ends ads related to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
FEBRUARY | Bitcoin price goes down by 50%, going below the $7000 threshold.
MARCH | Google announces the ban of online promotional advertisements of cryptocurrencies. Twitter also announces to ban promotional ads on cryptocurrencies.
END OF 2018 | Bitcoin price keeps going down. It is now less than $3000.
3 JANUARY 2019
The tenth anniversary of the Genesis Block mining the Bitcoin Blockchain.
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