It's been 16 years since the genesis block of the Bitcoin network was mined
- The community is celebrating the anniversary of the launch of the Bitcoin mainnet.
- On this day 16 years ago, Satoshi Nakamoto mined the Genesis block.
- The first transaction took place nine days later, with the developer sending 10 BTC to programmer Hal Finney.
On January 3, 2009, the genesis block of the Bitcoin network was mined. The community celebrates this day as the anniversary of the official launch of the blockchain.
On this day, someone under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto successfully processed the so-called zero block of the network. It included only one transaction, and as a reward, the creator of the blockchain received 50 BTC.
Note that at the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading near the $96,400 mark:
This means that the block reward was about $4.8 million given the current exchange rate. However, these 50 BTC are not redeemable, and an attempt to transfer them will be rejected by the network. Whether this was done on purpose is still unknown.
The reward was sent to the address 1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SLmv7DivfNa. It is assumed that other transfers to it can be spent if the creator of the bitcoin has a private key to it.
After four halvings, the last of which was in April 2024, the reward for each mined block was reduced to 3.125 BTC. More about this:
Notably, the genesis block hash contains the following text: "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks". According to the community, this was done either to confirm the date of block processing or as a "rebuke" to the banks.
At the network launch stage, the time between blocks was about 10 minutes. At the same time, the next block after the zeroth was processed six days later. The reason for this delay is also unknown.
The first transaction on the Bitcoin network, in turn, is dated January 12, 2009 - Nakamoto sent 10 BTC to programmer Hal Finney.