Fourteen years ago, on January 3, 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto launched the bitcoin network and block zero at approximately 1:15 pm ET on Saturday. Satoshi’s technology enabled “online payments that allow money to be transferred directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.” Since Bitcoin’s birth, it has transformed the financial system and ignited an entire cryptocurrency economy worth more than $800 billion in value.
History and significance of Bitcoin’s Genesis Block: 14 years later
”
Today is the 14th anniversary of theGenesis Block. It is the firstblock, called Block Zero. Block Zero is known as the firstblock that bootstrapped the network. Block Zero is special because there are no earlier ancestor blocks and it is hard-coded into the software, so it has an official starting point and all nodes can validate the blockchain from the beginning.
Since block zero is hard-coded, the coin-based reward of 50BTCis stored within the blockchain. The BTCstored within the first block can never be spent; the 50 BTCare stored at the bitcoin address “” 1A1zP” and over the past 14 years, numerous dust transactions sent to the wallet have been identified at this address. In other words, as of this writing, bitcoin address 1A1zP has 68.56BTCstored in the wallet; BTC is in the wallet and can never be spent; BTC
is in the wallet and can never be spent; and BTC
Another well-known fact about block zero is the message encoded by Satoshi Nakamoto in the coinbase parameters. This special field can be used to include any message in the block. Here is that message.” The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.” This message has been interpreted in a myriad of ways, mostly in reference to the 2008 financial crisis and the bank bailout.
Bitcoin users can be sure that the genesis block is the first block because, unlike all other blocks introduced into the system, there is no previous block to reference. The hash to which the previous block is supposed to refer is encoded with all zeros to indicate that it is null. All blocks following block zero contain a hash of the previous block’s header, connecting the blocks in the chain.
Many people do not know that after block zero, bitcoin block 1 was not mined until six days later, on January 9, 2009, at approximately 9:54 PM ET. Block 2 was mined one minute later at 9:55 PM, and block 3 was mined about seven minutes later at 10:02 PM. At this time, the next block began to have a more consistent block interval, or time between each block.
Historical data shows that on January 5, 2009, the total hash rate of the network, which Satoshi alone appears to have run, was approximately 948,165.4 hashes per second (H/s) or 948.1654 kilohashes per second (KH/s). by January 12, 2009. Bitcoin hash rate was 5
