Bitcoin’s 16th birthday: My, how you’ve grown

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Hands up if you were there on January 9, 2009, to witness Bitcoin’s birth. Oh, just one of you? Bitcoin‘s lonely and humble beginning stands in contrast to its position today as a technological and cultural phenomenon. Do we dare say “household name” yet? In some households, maybe, although not always in the way we’d like. On Bitcoin’s 16th birthday, we can say our favorite peer-to-peer electronic cash system has blossomed, but still has a lot of growing to do.

And boy, is it about to grow. 2025 will see the coming of Teranode, giving the BSV network more power than anyone ever imagined. Learn as much as you can, and use it wisely.

What’s with all the birthdays?

As you might have noticed, Bitcoin has several “birthdays,” and there are several dates with a valid claim to be important anniversaries. There’s the anniversary of the white paper release (October 31, 2008), the Genesis Block (January 3, 2009), the first Bitcoin transaction (January 12, 2009) and the first Bitcoin purchase (Laszlo Hanyecz’s pizza delivery, May 22, 2010). On 16th January 2020, the Bitcoin SV Node Team restored Bitcoin’s original protocol rules with Bitcoin 1.0.0, or the “Genesis upgrade.” Bitcoin could finally scale unboundedly on the blockchain, and miners gained more control over how users could use their services.

Yet here we are wishing Bitcoin another happy birthday on January 9. Why’s that? Well, it’s because that’s the day Satoshi Nakamoto released the first version of Bitcoin’s protocol software (Bitcoin v0.1) to the public on SourceForge. At the same time, he started using it himself. It marked the mining of “Block #1,” the first spendable 50-coin mining subsidy, and the moment proof-of-work (PoW) officially kicked in to keep the network secure.

From the moment that software was released, Bitcoin became an open and public network, available for anyone to use—or at least, anyone who knew about it and cared enough to try it out. To put it mildly, that wasn’t a large number of people at the time. It’s probably proof that time travel will never be invented since, if it is, thousands of future Bitcoiners will instantly head back to January 9, 2009 and start mining furiously.

Instead, the first nine blocks (at least) were mined solely by Satoshi Nakamoto. Hal Finney joined the network at Block #70, and it’s highly likely Satoshi’s network mined everything up to that point as well. The 50-coin block subsidy for every block greatly contributed to Satoshi’s now-legendary Bitcoin fortune—an untouched stash that continues to intrigue, tempt, and infuriate multiple groups to this day.

You’ll also notice that Bitcoin Block #1 came six days after Block #0 (aka the “Genesis Block“), which is substantially more than the protocol-defined ~10-minute intervals between every other block since. The only detailed explanation we’ve heard for this delay is the one involving Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) patches and network restarts before Bitcoin could start properly. If you don’t buy that story, then the only other reasons are guesses. Only Satoshi knows for sure.

So, if we assume that Block #0 was just a marker for the network about to begin, then Block #1 on January 9 is Bitcoin’s true “birthday.” Or, given there are three significant anniversaries in January, maybe we could just declare the whole month Bitcoin Month and have a longer party.

No one understands me!

On January 9, 2025, there are probably as many people who truly understand Bitcoin as people were mining it on that same day in 2009. Though it might be well into adolescence now, Bitcoin is still largely an undiscovered landscape. Even most of the so-called “experts” don’t fully grasp its potential. Few agree on what it really is and what it should become. It doesn’t get much more teenage than that.

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