In comparison to other major markets, Bitcoin has been around for a relatively short amount of time. But, in that brief time, crypto has enjoyed enormous growth and development. It has gone from being a basic concept to a market of enormous value, defying even the wildest expectations.
Here is a brief rundown of how Bitcoin was established, how it developed, and where it is today.
The Birth Of Bitcoin
The domain name bitcoin.org was registered on the 18th of August 2008. This is seen by many as the starting point of the currency, though technically a great deal occurred prior to the registration of the site. A long road of cryptographic development and study led up to this point, going back as far as 1992.
But for the purposes of this summary let’s consider bitcoin.org the official starting point. After bitcoin.org was founded a paper was published, titled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. The publisher and author were listed as Satoshi Nakamoto. As to whether Satoshi is a person or many persons, is unknown. The paper was published in October 2008.
On January 3rd the Bitcoin network kicked into existence for the first time. Satoshi mined the first Bitcoin block, block number 0. The first Bitcoin client was uploaded to SourceForge on January 9th. On January 12th the first transactions occurred. Programmer Hal Finney made the transaction and received 10BTC. Wei Dai and Nick Szabo were also early adopters. Notably, both Dai and Szabo had dabbled with the idea of digital currency in the past.
This was the beginning. Long before modern trading systems and anything like cryptocurrency exchange reviews had even been considered.
Nakamoto Disappears
As the early days of Bitcoin got rolling the markets were chaotic. Many were interested in getting involved, but few fully understand how any of it worked. A great deal of confusion and uncertainty surrounded almost every aspect of the currency.
Nakamoto, meanwhile, was busy keeping Bitcoin alive by being the primary miner. At some point in 2010 Nakamoto, or the handle Nakamoto, disappeared. The reins were handed over to Gavin Andresen. Andresen became the lead developer at the Bitcoin Foundation.
Who Is Nakamoto?
The biggest mystery surrounding the invention of Bitcoin is who Satoshi Nakamoto is. It goes without saying that, regardless of whether Nakamoto is a single person or a group of persons, they are all extremely wealthy. It is estimated that Nakamoto earned around 1,000,000 BTC in the early days, meaning that the fortune today would almost be inconceivably vast.
But who is Nakamoto? Speculation has been rife, with a number of news outlets even doing serious investigations. Some have simply settled on the idea that Finney, Dai, and Szabo are collectively Nakamoto. This makes a great deal of sense. Various other outlets have, however, come up with a spectrum of answers, all putting forward different names.
At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter who Nakamoto is, or whether the entity is even still active in the Bitcoin market.
