History of Bitcoin

The idea of Bitcoin was first introduced during the Global Financial Crisis back in 2008. On October 31, Satoshi Nakamoto uploaded their authored whitepaper named "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System" where they laid out their idea for a decentralized digital currency — taking out the need for trust and intermediaries in transactions.

Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin because they wanted a ticket out of the current financial system which was plagued with fraud, corruption, manipulation, secrecy, and dishonesty. Satoshi wanted to remove the need for trust in finance.

No one really knows who or what Satoshi Nakamoto is. The name "Satoshi Nakamoto" is a pseudonym that a person or a group of people claim for a particular purpose, which differs from their original name/s.

Numerous people have been speculated to be Satoshi Nakamoto including Shinichi Mochizuki, Ross William Ulbricht, Hal Finney, Nick Szabo, and Adam Back. However, there isn't any clear answer to who Satoshi Nakamoto really is… We might never even find out.

On January 3, 2009, the Bitcoin network came to life with Satoshi Nakamoto mining the genesis block of Bitcoin (block number zero), creating the first fifty (50) bitcoin ever in existence. 

This is how it looked like:

The text embedded into the genesis block read: "The Times Jan/03/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks." 

It’s a reference to the newspaper headline on the exact day the genesis block was mined (refer to photo below). This symbolizes how the government bailed out the banks and institutions during the Global Financial Crisis, revealing the bias and corruption present in the economy.

The first-ever Bitcoin transaction happened on January 12, 2009, when Satoshi Nakamoto sent Hal Finney, one of the first supporters and adopters of Bitcoin, ten (10) bitcoin.

On August 6, 2010, a vulnerability was spotted in the Bitcoin protocol, which allowed bad actors to create billions of bitcoin into existence. A few hours later, the Bitcoin protocol was upgraded to fix the exploit. That was the only major security flaw ever found in Bitcoin's history.

The first commercial Bitcoin transaction happened on May 22, 2010. Laszlo Hanyecz, a programmer from Florida, paid 10,000 bitcoin for two Papa John's Pizzas. Because of this, May 22 is now a Bitcoin holiday named "Bitcoin Pizza Day".

From Satoshi Nakamoto's extraordinary idea to the mundane act of buying pizza, the history of Bitcoin is definitely worth talking about. 

All the events contributing to Bitcoin's history have led up to the Bitcoin we hear about today — a global decentralized digital currency growing at an exponential rate with tens of millions of users worldwide.

Fascinating, am I right? Let's go ahead and proceed to the next topic.