The History Of Bitcoin: Genesis Block
Yesterday I tweeted out a whole bunch of questions and some of the information I learned about the early days of bitcoin.
Even I didn’t know I found very very interesting and so today what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna start off by going through a couple of early days of bitcoin of things that you may not know. Most people know that at october 31st 2008 halloween 2008 satoshi nakamoto published the bitcoin white paper. It’s a date that everyone knows on january 3rd 2009 the bitcoin blockchain was publicly released. Most people know that date as well but what you may not know is that the first block is block zero. It’s not block one block zero genesis block.
Most of you probably do know that you also know this message here the times zero. Three jan 2009 chancellor and brink of second bailout for banks that is all pretty much well-known knowledge. Now let’s go into the second tweet that we have here. I did not know this the first thing is that the genesis block had 50 bitcoin in it obviously and satoshi mined those 50 bitcoin but of the 50 bitcoin from the genesis block they technically are not spendable. So this is not something where society went and mined the 50 bitcoin and they could turn around and have sold it to somebody or even later.
Once there was actual liquidity exchanges infrastructure a us dollar price assigned to it etc. Those 50 bitcoin and the genesis block are not spendable. So that was the first thing that I think – uh, some people know that but some people do not so some people may find that interesting. The second thing was that the genesis block was mined again block 0 on january 3rd 2009. The first one but block one which was technically the second block in this in the blockchain wasn’t mined until january 8 2009.
So after the first block that second block when it was actually mined was five days later so it didn’t just come out and immediately have every 10 minutes or so of block after block being mined so five days later was the genesis block. Now if we go ahead and we look why is january 8th interesting on. January 8 2009 that lines up with an email that was sent from satoshi to the cryptography email list on the same date and the nakamoto institute has all of the emails that are – you can just go to satoshi. Nakamotoinstitute. Org.
You see all the emails there – this specific email talks about announcing the first release of bitcoin – a new electronic cash system that uses a peer-to-peer network to prevent double spending. Obviously bitcoin one of the big technical innovations was preventing double spending. It’s completely decentralized with no server or central authority. Pretty clear-cut concise two-sentence description of what bitcoin is and then you can obviously. There’s a link to download it.
It is only windows for now wasn’t available anything else just windows open source c plus plus code is included and then there’s some instructions on how you can actually start to use the blockchain. So that alone is interesting the first block 50 bitcoin and the genesis block not spendable from a technical standpoint. The second thing is that the second block, block one was not actually mined until five days later on january 8 2009. At the same time there was the email to the cryptography list and the release of the public client for bitcoin. Then lastly we have Jamison lop showed me yesterday that satoshi not only didn’t pre-mine bitcoin but that person or group didn’t even fast mine bitcoin but it actually throttled down the miners.
Now patoshi and satoshi are not necessarily the same person but patoshi is known as a person or group that mined a ton of bitcoin. It’s estimated around 700 000 bitcoin in the first year and so what I found interesting about this thing that jameson pointed out is that you can see in the data through those block timestamp deltas that there was a intentional throttling of the hash rate. So potoshi almost never mind blocks less than five minutes apart this pattern was revealed by sergio lerner in a recent article at the time it was recent. About a year or two ago and then jamison went and he actually verified it himself and so what I think I really kind of take away from a couple of these details. Here is one is that there is an immense constraint in mining that much bitcoin never spending.
It never touching it never doing anything right kind of an altruistic view of the world and the launch of this product. Is that there was a very very intentional and powerful foresight to understand what some of the critiques in the future could be and also an understanding of what a truly fair. Democratic kind of powerful launch of this asset would be and so I think that what i’m gonna start doing is on a couple of these shows i’m going to go and i’m going to find tidbits from the early days of bitcoin. I’m going to bring them up we’re going to talk about some of the things that if you’ve been in bitcoin for a really really long time. If you were around especially you know 2009 10 11 12 13 14 then you may know some of the stuff that was kind of newer information but there’s a whole new class of people who are showing up in 2017 18 19 20 21 and they may not know.
Some of these details so we’re gonna go find a bunch of them for you and we’re gonna keep bringing them up and going through it. I think we may even at some point go through some of the early satoshi emails and really just walk through like here was the conversation that was happening in the early days. That people can wrap their heads around. It first block genesis block 50 bitcoin not spendable second block wasn’t mined until january 8 2009 and then on january 8 2009 you also got this email to the cryptography mailing list saying hey announcing the first release of bitcoin. New electronic cash system that uses peer-to-peer network to prevent double spending download link windows only and a bunch of instructions on how to install it what did you guys take away.
When you saw some of this information I thought it was interesting it’s always good to look at critiques or things that people could eventually say or problems with the system or the infrastructure kind of the origin of bitcoin and go back and like learn history about it so I think it was cool! I think it was cool that people came out and gave their research and their opinion and stuff like that but I think we should continue to do it and and seek out not only the history of it but the other side of the argument about what people could eventually complain about. John it’s a new asset right it’s over just a little bit over a decade old people are still learning about what’s going on today and the innovations in the future but they’re also obviously still learning about what has happened in the past and kind of how bitcoin got started this isn’t really concerning to me in any sense it’s interesting to me um I did not know this but it’s nice to see that people are still going back and learning about it um look it’s a new asset people are gonna continuously talk about it and dig deeper and deeper into the origins of.
