A decade ago, Bitcoin’s secret founder Satoshi Nakamoto promulgated a paper called “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.” On Wednesday, the world’s leading cryptocurrency celebrated its 10th birthday. For those who haven’t been following Bitcoin closely, below is an outline of the history of the world’s leading cryptocurrency so far:
Creation
Story Of Cryptocurrency Bitcoin
On 18 August 2008, the domain name bitcoin.org was listed. Later in the year 2008, on 31 October, a paper written by Satoshi Nakamoto an unknown personality or group of people was published. The paper was Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. This paper described various ways of using a peer-to-peer network to create what was defined as “a system for electronic transactions without depending on trust”. On 3 January 2009, the bitcoin network arrived with Satoshi Nakamoto mining the genesis block of bitcoin (block number 0), which had a prize of 50 BTC.
Satoshi Nakamoto and the Year 2009
Satoshi Nakamoto is considered to be an alias for the person or people who invented the original BTC protocol in 2008 and started the network in 2009. Nakamoto was responsible for generating the bulk of the official BTC software and was busy in making changes and posting technical information on the bitcoin forum. There has been stirring speculation about the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto.
First Bitcoin Transaction
In the year 2009 the first block of BTC, recognized as the Genesis Block, was mined. On Jan 9, the first repetition of Bitcoin software was delivered, and on Jan. 12, the first BTC transaction happened between Satoshi Nakamoto and a famous computer programmer and developer Hal Finney.
Growth of Bitcoin
In the month of June 2009, the New Liberty Standard published the first BTC exchange rate as $1 to be worth 1,309.03 BTC. In the month of December Nakamoto released the second version of the software.
The year 2011
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit group, began taking bitcoins in January 2011 but it then stopped accepting Bitcoins citing doubts over a lack of legitimate criterion about new money rules. In June 2011 WikiLeaks and other organizations started to accept bitcoins for benefactions.
2012-2013
The anonymity of Bitcoin was responsible for its illegal use in the darknet. Silk Road was the first dark market, and it became famous for allowing people to sell drugs and other illegal items online using Bitcoin. In the year 2013, crypto exchange Coinbase sold more than $1m-worth of bitcoin in a month for the first time. Due to this, the bitcoin’s price saw a major growth in 2013, rising to over $1,200 by the end of the year. According to Forbes, 2013 was the year of the Bitcoin.
2014 -2015
In the month February 2014, one of the largest bitcoin exchanges, Mt. Gox halted withdrawals because of some technical issues but later Mt. Gox filed for bankruptcy security in Japan and declared that 744,000 BTC had been stolen.
In January 2015 Coinbase raised approximately 75 million USD and in the same year, UK-based exchange Bitstamp declared that their exchange will go offline to investigate a hack. The hacker had stolen 19,000 BTC(equivalent to roughly US$5 million at that time) from their hot wallet. Bitstamp recommenced trading on 9 January after improving the security measures and ensuring clients that their account would not be influenced.
2016-2017
These two years were very crucial for the Bitcoin. Many regulators, governments and financial institutions started taking this cryptocurrency seriously. The number of businesses taking BTC continued to rise. In the year 2017, Bitcoin climbed to more than $20,000. As the price climbed, more and more financial companies began to study it. Exchange operators like CBOE and CME Group both launched bitcoin futures in the month of December 2017.
The Year 2018
In the year 2018, Bitcoin is gaining more legitimacy among legislators and financial companies. For example, the government of Ukraine has started a state policy to legalize BTC and precisely manage and monitor the fintech area as a wheel of a new public policy produced by the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade. The process may take up to three years to achieve but ultimately, businesses built around digital assets would become a legal part of the country’s market.
Disclaimer: This information should not be interpreted as an endorsement of any cryptocurrency. It is not a recommendation to trade. The crypto market is full of surprises and overhyped assets. Do your research before buying anything. Do not invest more than you can afford to lose.
The infographic credits to btxchange.io.
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