A souvenir of the birth of Bitcoin: your chance to own a little piece of history

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Bitcoin is ten years old this month. It’s ten years since the ‘genesis block’ – the first on the Bitcoin blockchain – was created. Before you know it, that moment will be part of history. One day your grandchildren will ask ‘were you around at the time Bitcoin was invented?’ And if you want to be able to prove that you were, here’s an idea that could help.

It’s a commemorative silver coin, specially minted for the anniversary. Only 42 of them will be created – not because 42 was Douglas Adams’ answer to “the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything” but because it’s twice the number of millions of Bitcoins that will ever exist.

Half of the coins are being auctioned. Of the remaining 21, one will be presented, through CoinGeek, to “a member of the Bitcoin community who has protected the original Satoshi Vision of Bitcoin” – watch for further news about that. And there are plans to offer another to the Royal Mint, the official manufacturer of British and other countries’ coins, as part of its Royal Mint Experience.

The rest will be distributed by their creator, Rogelio Reyna, co-founder and CEO of binde.io, a Mexican startup that works on blockchain applications for a wide range of industries. Reyna describes the coin as “the first of its kind”. He told CoinGeek about its intricate design, which features the mythical ouroboros, an image of a snake devouring its own tail, which Reyna sees as “representing the infinity of human economic transactions”. That’s just one of many symbols on both sides of the silver coin, including an egg representing the genesis block. You can find out more about the coin on its website, which describes a design in which “cash, biology, technology and hope dance together”.

The most high-tech feature of the silver coin is embedded at its centre: a tiny capsule containing liquid in which Reyna says he’s created synthetic DNA molecules whose sequencing matches the code of the genesis block.

If you’d like to get your hands on a coin, Reyna will only accept bids in the auction in Bitcoin SV (BSV), which he sees as “more tied to the [Satoshi Nakamoto] White Paper and the initial version of Bitcoin” than the other two coins deriving from the genesis block, BTC and BCH. Reyna couldn’t be more bullish about BSV: “I’m betting my career, my reputation and my work on that chain.” At the same time, he doesn’t want to start a dispute with the other two chains. There are “brilliant, very bright people” also working on BTC and BCH, he says, but “at the end of the day one has to make a choice, right?”

The process of manufacturing the silver coins allowed Reyna’s business, binde.io, to learn about the manufacturing processes for which it’s developing blockchain applications. Working with third parties allowed binde to “exercise those muscles” and “helped us create some building blocks that we’ll be reusing in our applications”.

Reyna insists that BSV is “is not just an investment vehicle”: he wants to be part of a movement that creates applications that makes it an essential part of the everyday economy. But if you want to hang onto a souvenir of this Bitcoin moment in a medium that is still an old-fashioned investment vehicle, you can find out how to bid for your own silver coin at bitcoin10y.io. Good luck!

Watch Becky Liggero interviewing Rogelio Reyna for CoinGeek