Please answer 2008: Bitcoin's 13th anniversary

Image source @ Visual China

On October 31, 2008, a person named Satoshi Nakamoto published a paper in a cryptographic email on the metzdowd.com website entitled "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System", and two months later, on January 3, 2009, the Bitcoin Creation Block (the first block) was generated.

As a test, on January 12, 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto and Hal Finney, a famous person in the crypto field, conducted a bitcoin transaction test, and the number of transactions tested was 10 BTC, and in order to reflect the decentralization of Bitcoin, the transaction fee was 0 BTC.

Because Satoshi Nakamoto has not been seen, Finney was once suspected to be Nakamoto himself, but Finney unfortunately suffered from alzheimer's disease (ALS) in 2014, and denied the claim before his death in August, and Hani's body is currently cryopreserved by the Alcor Foundation for The Continuation of Life.

The opportunity for the birth of the crypto world is undoubtedly the Lehman shock. After the 2008 financial crisis, the Federal Reserve increased the issuance of paper money as an economic stimulus, making the financial community desperate for the government and large banks, and technicians began to establish their own "virtual world monetary system".

The first commercial use of Bitcoin happened in this small community.

On May 18, 2010, developer Laszlo Hanyecz posted a post on the Bitcointalk forum offering 10,000 bitcoins for several pizzas, even homemade. Subsequently, a netizen who saw the post ordered 2 large pizzas from the pizzeria to hanyecz's home, and on May 22, Hanyecz said that he had really paid the 10,000 bitcoins to the lucky netizen.

According to the historical market data obtained by the chain, the bitcoins at that time were so low that they could only be marked with 0.00 worthless things, and these 2 pizzas can be said to be a play and handout between technicians. At that time, these 10,000 bitcoins had a huge impact on the market after that.

For the world of foodies, the deal led to the birth of the 522 Crypto Pizza Festival.

But for the financial trading community, this 10,000 bitcoins is calculated at $46,194 (chain market data) after the 13th anniversary of the birth of Bitcoin on January 4, 2022, which is 461.94 million US dollars.

$220 million a pizza.

Although transactions are only made between technologists, the new species of Bitcoin has attracted attention because of the price surge in late 2010. According to network news, bitcoin in the late 2010 period has risen to $0.08 per coin, which also indirectly contributed to the birth of the world's first cryptocurrency exchange.

In July 2010, the world's first bitcoin exchange "Mt.Gox" (commonly known as Mentougou) began to provide services, the price of bitcoin is about 0.008 US dollars, but the market is also extremely unstable at that time, and it is normal to rise and fall more than 100 times.

At that time, the mining of bitcoins has gradually emerged, the time of miner 0 mining and the birth date of the genesis block are the same day, and miner 0 has obtained 50 bitcoins for the first time, and the wallet address of the miner has not been passive so far, and there are small amounts of bitcoins recorded from time to time.

What made Bitcoin more popular was Time magazine, on April 16, 2011, after the Times published Bitcoin, the price of Bitcoin soared from $1 in April of that year to $32 peak in June, up 3200% in just 3 months.

Scandals and hacking attacks continue

It was also this increase that brought about the biggest disaster in the history of the crypto industry. The Mentougou exchange was hacked, the Mentougou exchange stopped trading in mid-June, and bitcoin also plummeted wildly, falling to $2 per coin in November 2011, a drop of more than 1600%.

This is also the root cause of bitcoin's current lack of recognition by the mainstream market. Security is not guaranteed.

The Mentougou incident has not yet been clearly compensated, and the users who have suffered losses are still fighting hard.

Although the battlefield before 2011 was in the European and American markets, in the second half of 2011, the focus of the crypto community, especially the crypto trading market, has shifted to the Japanese market.

Tokyo, where financial trading is well developed, smells the smell.

In 2012, digital currency exchange Coincheck was founded in Tokyo. Subsequently, the price of Bitcoin has also been rising steadily, reaching $4.80 in May 2012 and climbing to around $15 in August.

In 2013, the world economy was turbulent again, and in the afterglow of the 2008 financial crisis, the two major banks in Cyprus, which lacked supervision, absorbed huge amounts of foreign deposits, and the plate expanded to a level that the EU could not bear, triggering a second crisis, also known as the Cyprus crisis.

In early April, oil prices soared to $220 a barrel. The seeds of the money crisis have a tendency to rekindle. The crypto community has received some non-technical attention.

In April, Bitcoin had a market capitalization of more than $1 billion.

In 2014, the Mt. Gox exchange was again attacked by cyberattacks, the price of BTC plummeted again, and Bitcoin was completely branded as a bubble.

However, the trading market is still hot, and at the beginning of the year, Japan's second cryptocurrency exchange bitFlyer was established.

In early 2015, a hack occurred on the exchange Bitstamp, losing 20,000 BTC. In August 2015, Bitfinex was revealed to have lost 120,000 BTC.

The rise of the payments space

In addition to the two pizzas mentioned above, bits were not developed for commercial use for online payments until December 2014, when Microsoft said it might accept bitcoin payments.

In October of the following year, Europe said that bitcoin transactions were exempt from VAT, and bitcoin was officially recognized as a method of payment.

In May of the same year, the New York State Department of Financial Services announced the first Bitcoin business license "Bit License".

In Japan, bitcoin payments in offline stores have also begun to rise, but mainly merchants directly exchange bitcoin for the equivalent in japanese yen on the exchange. Because the Japanese Financial Services Agency issued the amendment to the "Fund Determination Algorithm", it recognizes the legal status of Bitcoin and can be used for settlement.

The act is still the legal protection of crypto exchanges. Japanese exchanges must apply for a license at the Financial Services Agency.

At the same time, Japan's GMO established a third cryptocurrency exchange, GMO Coin.

The Bitcoin bubble era

2017 is known as the Year of the Cryptocurrency Dollar.

The main reason is the formation of the Bitcoin bubble, in addition to the Bitcoin fork, various digital currencies continue to emerge and form a scuffle. New concepts, new currencies, and new laws are emerging. Extremely high media exposure.

Bitcoin reached a historic $10,000 on November 29, 2017. Similarly, this surge has brought historic disasters to Bitcoin.

In 2018, the Japanese digital currency exchange Coincheck had the largest theft in the history of cryptocurrencies, and $500 million of cryptocurrencies were taken away by hackers. This incident has allowed the focus of the crypto market to spread, and the Chinese, European, and American markets have regained prosperity. For details, please refer to the previous article of the chain:

Although Twitter, Facebook, and Google jointly said that cryptocurrency ads are banned, the crazy increase and great exposure have made Bitcoin a household name.

On September 4, 2017, seven ministries and commissions, including Chinese Min min bank, jointly issued the Announcement on Preventing the Financing Risks of Token Issuance, requiring the prohibition of virtual currency transactions. At the same time, 2018 once again reiterated that digital currency trading is extremely risky.

Throughout 2018 to mid-2019, Bitcoin hovered below $10,000. Although there was a brief recovery in the year, it has been a continuous downturn.

Around 2020, the impact of the new crown on the real economy has made the crypto industry rise again. The excessive voice of cryptocurrencies in the payment space, coupled with concepts such as the rise of NFTs in 2020, has made the crypto industry continue to be hot. Bitcoin broke through $20,000 for the first time in December 2020. (For details, please refer to [Chain Get Exclusive] PayPal wants to knock on the door of Japan, the giants are leaderless and look at the NFT market in another way)

The crazy cryptocurrency trading market has attracted the attention of governments. China also reaffirmed the dangers of the cryptocurrency exchange market and mining market in 2021 and resolutely cracked down on mining that consumes huge amounts of energy.

Bitcoin price bends over.

Starting in 2021, cosmic internet celebrity Musk will single-handedly pull up the market value of Bitcoin and Dogecoin. After Tesla, PayPal and other countries have said that they accept bitcoin payments, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and Japan's giant banks have expressed the news of issuing digital currencies, making digital currencies, CBDCs and other concepts a hot search. (For details, please refer to [Chain Exclusive] Pacific Island CBDC plans are rising and falling, and the situation of "dollar hegemony" is really difficult to eliminate)

In 2021, the Government of El Salvador announced the passage of the Bitcoin Act, and in September, Bitcoin officially became the country's legal tender. In the seaside town of Mizata, the country's president, Nayib Bukele, announced that El Salvador intends to issue the world's first sovereign bitcoin bond, initially expected to issue around $1 billion, and build a bitcoin city that will be exempt from nearly all taxes except consumption tax. (For details, please refer to [Chain Exclusive] El Salvador wants to create a Bitcoin tax haven?) The self-proclaimed president of Alexander the Great announces the Pit City Plan)

According to the latest data of the chain market, the price of Bitcoin on January 4, 2022, 13 years after the birth of Bitcoin, was $46,488 per coin, and the premium is not clear to ordinary calculators.

The industry bubble continues, and the Bitcoin myth continues.

I am afraid that I will never see a more magical world than Bitcoin in this life. Back in 2008, the National Olympics, what would you say to yourself?

[This article was originally published in Chainde, authorized by Titanium Media App, author: Maori Goro]