Eight years ago today, Satoshi Nakamoto mined “Block 0”, the genesis block of the Bitcoin blockchain.
Embedded in this block is the message, “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks”, a reference to a headline in the UK newspaper The Times and possibly a hint as to Nakamoto’s motivation for creating Bitcoin.
Bitcoin Block 1 was mined five days later, on January 8, 2009, leading some to believe that Block 0 was back-dated to match the date of the embedded newspaper headline.
Regardless of the exact date of Bitcoin’s genesis, one thing is certain: with the launch of the Bitcoin genesis block, Satoshi Nakamoto succeeded in forever changing the way we think about money, value, and trust online.
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