In a few weeks, Satoshi Nakamoto's invention will already be celebrating its 15th birthday. In this article, we invite you to discover the key dates that have marked its history forever. From the birth of Bitcoin until today, we tell you about these mythical events and the stories that surround them.
August 18, 2008 - Bitcoin.org domain name registration
This first date marks the purchase of domain name bitcoin.org. Satoshi purchased it fromanonymousspeech.com. This website will host The Bitcoin White Paper, as well as a link to sourceforge.net, where you could download the software.
Less well known, but Satoshi Nakamoto had reserved two domain names consecutively for his invention. The day before the recording of bitcoin.org, he had also purchased netcoin.org. Surely Satoshi hesitated about what name he was going to give to his invention.
October 31, 2008 - The publication of the Bitcoin White Paper
At 19:10 French time, people subscribed to the site's “The Cryptography Mailing List” mailing list metzdowd.com receive an email from a certain Satoshi Nakamoto. It starts with the sentence:” I worked on a new electronic payment system that was entirely peer-to-peer, without a trusted third party. ” (French translation). A link leading to bitcoin.org allows you to download the Bitcoin White Paper.
On March 24, 2009, the first version of the White Paper was modified by Satoshi. It is this second version that is still being presented to us today. Between the two publications, only a few small changes have been made.
January 3, 2009 - The effective launch of the Bitcoin protocol
It was on this date that the genesis block (or block No. 0) of Bitcoin was published by Satoshi. This marks the concrete launch of the Bitcoin blockchain. The Coinbase transaction for this block includes the newspaper title The Times of the day: “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on Brink of Second Bailout for Banks”. The release of the first version of the Bitcoin software will only take place January 9, 2009.
Since 2019, every January 3 has also been the scene of “Proof-of-Key Day”. To celebrate the anniversary of the genesis block, there is a tradition within the community of withdrawing all the bitcoins held by exchange platforms. This makes it possible to ensure that they actually own the bitcoins they claim.
After tweeting ” Running Bitcoin ” On January 11, 2009, Hal Finney will also be the recipient of The very first Bitcoin transaction (outside of Coinbase transactions). In block 170, Satoshi Nakamoto thus sends 10 bitcoins to Finney.
October 5, 2009 - The first Bitcoin exchange rate
This is the first time that the value of Bitcoin has been realized by establishing an exchange rate against the American dollar. New Liberty Standard Then offers to exchange bitcoins for dollars, and vice versa, through PayPal transactions. The first exchange value, established on October 5, 2009, is $1.00 USD for 1,309.03 bitcoins.
May 22, 2010 - Bitcoin Pizza Day
On May 18, 2010, a user named Laszlo posted a message on the Bitcointalk forum in which he asks if a person would like to prepare 2 pizzas for him in exchange for 10,000 bitcoins. At that time, it was approximately the equivalent of €34. On May 22, he will confirm that a certain “Jercos” delivered his meal to him.
Even if you can't be convinced of it, This transaction is generally considered to be the very first purchase of physical goods made in bitcoin. Another previous sale attempt had already taken place, on January 24, 2010, in which a user offered A wallpaper image for 500 bitcoins.
Each year, the community celebrates the anniversary of this event by eating pizza.
August 15, 2010 - The output overflow bug
On this day, developer Jeff Garzik Spot a block that seems odd. At the height no. 74,638, a valid transaction sends just over 184 billion bitcoins to two addresses.
This bug was made possible by a very simple vulnerability: if the total sum of the outputs of a transaction in SATS exceeded 2^64, then the amount interpreted by the nodes started from scratch. It's a bit like if you exceeded 999,999 km on your car's speedometer and it started from scratch, because there are only 6 numbers that can be displayed on the dashboard.
Fortunately, this vulnerability was discovered just over an hour after being exploited. A first emergency fix was available only 4 hours later. Satoshi will offer another more comprehensive patch 5 hours after the release of block 74 638.
This event is often considered to be the biggest bug in Bitcoin history.
December 12, 2010 - Satoshi's public departure
It was on this date that Satoshi Nakamoto sent His last message on the Bitcointalk forum before disappearing. However, he will continue to have a few private exchanges, by email, with some members of the community until spring 2011. Gavin Andresen took over as the main maintainer of the software.
February 10, 2011 - Parity with the USD
For the first time in its history, bitcoin has reached parity with the US dollar. 1 BTC = 1 USD.
April 23, 2011 - Satoshi's last private message
Mike Hearn, an engineer at Google, Received the very last email that day known from Satoshi Nakamoto. In this one, he says in particular:” I moved on. It's in good hands with Gavin and everyone.” (French translation).
November 16, 2011 - The biggest deal in history
On that day, 550,000 bitcoins were consolidated by the famous MtGox exchange platform. This transaction is the largest ever observed in terms of amounts traded. Aside from if Satoshi and his million dormant bitcoins wake up, it's very likely that we'll never see that record be broken.
January 14, 2016 - The Lightning White Paper is released
Joseph Poon and Thaddeus Dryja publish A scientific paper named:”The Bitcoin Lightning Network: Scalable Off-Chain Instant Payments.” In it, they describe a way to create bi-directional channels for making payments outside of the Bitcoin system. However, to be fully operational, this system must use a new type of sighash that allows non-malleable Bitcoin transactions to be carried out. This criterion will only be met in 2017 with the SegWit soft fork, by separating the witness data from the rest of the transaction.
However, this idea of off-chain payments is not new. As early as 2011, Matt Corallo and Mike Hearn had already proposed a similar implementation of micropayment channels, based on an idea by Jeremy Spilman and Satoshi Nakamoto himself.
August 1, 2017 - The Bitcoin Cash hard fork
This event probably represents the biggest split in the Bitcoin community. While the debates on block size have been going on for several months, part of the community is active in the hard fork, increasing the maximum block size to 8 MB, instead of 1 MB. The Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash blockchains split after block 478,558 on August 1, 2017.
Starting from Block No. 481,824, up-to-date nodes started to enforce the SegWit soft fork. This update is often considered to be the most significant in the entire history of Bitcoin. It is mainly aimed at correcting the malleability of transactions. This problem is solved by moving the unlock scripts (scriptSig), containing the signatures, into a separate data structure called the “witness.” SegWit also increases the transaction capacity of the network, adds a script versioning system, proposes new addresses and improves the signature algorithm.
November 14, 2021 - The activation of Taproot
On this date, another major soft fork of the Bitcoin protocol occurred. Taproot was activated from Block No. 709,632. This update mainly brings improvements in terms of privacy, efficiency, and flexibility. In particular, it introduced the use of a new electronic signature algorithm: the Schnorr protocol.
Conclusion
Here are a few dates that I thought were important to know. It is always very interesting to dive back into the history of Bitcoin, especially through discussions on the forums. This often allows us to discover and learn new things about this magnificent invention.
In this article, we focused only on the significant dates from the birth of Bitcoin to today. However, the story of Satoshi Nakamoto's invention began well before 2008. If you want to discover the roots of Bitcoin, both ideologically and technically, I invite you to read this other article: Why was Bitcoin created?
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