Bitcoin is the first and at the same time the most popular still available cryptocurrency – it is a form of money, which uses cryptography to control its own creation and management. It completely resigns from governance of centralized regulators. We have to notice, that not all the technological solutions and conceptions used to create BTC are new. Satoshi Nakamoto (who is believed to be a creator of Bitcoin) joined few existing ideas, which created base to create independent system of virtual currency flow.
The beginnings of BTC
On 31st October 2008 in the internet manifest by Satoshi Nakamoto was published. It was titled: Bitcoin: Electronic peer-to-peer money system. It described in detail the methods of using P2P network to create “system of electronic transactions which are not based only on the mutual trust”.
We define electronic currency as a chain of digital signatures. Each owner can transfer coin value through digital signature of hash of previous transaction and public key of next owner, increasing this value in the end of coin code. Receiver of payment has a possibility to verify these signatures to check the chain of owning – we read in a manifest, its original form from 2008 is still available on the bitcoin.org website.
Using peer-to-peer gives users a possibility to transfer money without any third parties. Bitcoin network makes possible to send money online directly to the other people.
Bitcoin development
In the January 2009 Bitcoin network was created and the first BTC client (shared on open source license). Satoshi Nakamoto mined the first Bitcoin block (called a genesis) worth of 50 BTC. First real Bitcoin price was set based on the cost of mining. It was on the 5th October 2009 and for 1 US dollar you could get as much as 1309 BTC. Today the roles are reversed and BTC is much more expensive than USD.
Laszlo Haneycz is a programmer who is the first person in history that used Bitcoin on consumption, it was on 22nd May 2010. He payed for 2 pizzas in Papa John’s in Jacksonville, Florida 10,000 BTC, which was an equivalent of about 30 USD back then.
First exchange “Bitcoin Market” was created in February 2010, it was used mostly to pay for IT services. In time more and more people started getting interested in this virtual coin.
- 03/01/ 2009 – The beginning of Bitcoin and first block created – called “genesis”
- 09/01/2009 – First version of Bitcoin client (0/1)
- 12/01/2009 – First transaction in Bitcoin network
- 05/10/2009 – The price of Bitcoin was established based on cost of mining 1 USD = 1309 BTC
- 06/02/2010 –First Bitcoin exchange – Bitcoin Market
- 22/05/2010 – First use of Bitcoin as a currency – pizza purchase for 10,000 BTC
- 17/07/2010 – Opening of the biggest for few years Bitcoin exchange – Mt. Gox
- 18/07/2010 – Start of mining on GPU’s
- 18/09/2010 – First Bitcoin mine – “Slush’s Pool”
- 06/11/2010 – Bitcoin market cap of $1m
- 08/12/2010 – First transaction using smartphone
- 09/12/2010 – Bitcoin difficulty of 10,000
- 08/01/2011 –Slush’s Pool mine reaches 10,000 Mhash/s
- 28/01/2011 – 25% of all possible Bitcoins were mined
- 09/02/2011 – 1 BTC = 1 USD
- 14/02/2011 – Bitcoin user sells his 1984 Celica Supra for 3000 BTC
- 16/04/2011 – First article about Bitcoin in mainstream media – TIME – ”Online Cash Bitcoin Could Challenge Governments, Banks”
- 30/04/2011 – Difficulty reached 100,000
- 02/06/2011 –1BTC = 10 USD
- 08/06/2011 – New ATH and first Bitcoin bubble 1BTC = 31.91 $
- 14/04/2011 – WikiLeaks accepts Bitcoin
- 24/06/2011 – Difficulty reached 1m
- 29/06/2011 –BitPay starts
- 20/09/2011 – First Bitcoin conference and World Expo in New York
- 23/09/2011 –P2Pool is created
- 13/02/2012 – TradeHill exchange is down
- 11/05/2012 –Bitcoinica platform is down
- 06/2012 –Coinbase is created
- 09/2012 –KnCMiner is created – manufactory of mining hardware
- 27/09/2012 – Bitcoin Fundation is created
- 15/11/2012 – WordPress.com accepts Bitcoin
- 28/11/2012 – Decrease of Bitcoin block price from 50 BTC to 25 USD
- 12/03/213 – Hard Fork of blockchain
- 18/03/2013 – First try to regulate Bitcoin by FinCEN (USA)
- 28/03/2013 – Bitcoin market cap of $1bn
- 10/04/2013 – Second Bitcoin buble. New ATH 1BTC = 266$
- 02/05/2013 – First Bitcoin ATM
- 07/2013 – Billionaire brothers Winklevoss join Bitcoin
- 09/09/2013 – Bitcoin ticker on Bloomberg
- 20/09/2013 – Bitcoin is a fully legal payment method in Germany
- 19/11/2013 – 1 BTC = 1000 USD
- 19/11/2013 – Bitcoin exceeds Western Union in terms of money sent
- 21/11/2013 – First university (Cyprus) accepting Bitcoin
- 22/11/2013 – Space travel tickets for Bitcoin
- 29/11/2013 – Third Bitcoin bubble – 1BTC = 1242$
- 05/12/2013 – The beginning of Bitcoin ban in China
- 25/03/2013 – Denmark lets Bitcoin trading tax-free
- 09/01/2013 – Overstock accepts Bitcoin
- 28/02/2014 – The fall of the biggest Bitcoin exchange – Mt.Gox
- 01/07/2014 – NewEgg accepts Bitcoin
- 18/07/2014 – Dell accepts Bitcoin
- 30/07/2014 – Wikipedia accepts Bitcoin
- 02/03/2017 – Bitcoin worth more than a gold – 1268$ za 1 BTC
- 1/08/2017 – First hard fork BTC and creation of Bitcoin Cash (BCH)
- 21/10/2017 – Bitcoin market cap exceeds $100bn
- 24/10/2017 – Second hard fork BTC and creation of Bitcoin Gold (BTG)