3 January 2025 marks the 16th anniversary of bitcoin (BTC). On this very day in 2009, the very first block in the main cryptocurrency's network, known as the Genesis Block, was created. It was mined on a small server in Helsinki, and the reward for mining it was 50 bitcoins, which at the time of publication is about $4.8 million.
Moreover, the first block contained a headline from a newspaper article in The Times: 'Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks'. The article described the British government's preparations for a second round of bank bailouts following the global financial crisis of 2008.
Headline from The Times article
It is assumed that the anonymous creator of bitcoin, known by the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, referenced the global financial crisis to emphasize that bitcoin was created as an alternative to the traditional financial system.
Although the bitcoin network was launched in early January, the first transaction of the main cryptocurrency occurred more than a week after the creation of the first block — on 12 January 2009, 10 BTC were sent from Satoshi Nakamoto to developer Hal Finney in block 170. The first trades were only possible on 5 October, when bitcoin appeared on the New Liberty Standart exchange, where $1 could buy 1,309 BTC (now their value is $125 million).
BTC/USD
On 9 February 2011, bitcoin equaled the value of the US dollar for the first time, and on 16 April of the same year, a major publication wrote about the new asset for the first time — Time magazine published an article about bitcoin. The total currency capitalization reached the $10 million mark. As of 3 January 2024 (1:00 PM MSK), the BTC price peak was recorded at about $108,000 on 17 December 2024. The current price is around $96,700, and the market capitalization of the asset is $1.9 trillion.