Even since the first BTC transaction was made to American software developer Hal Finney, BTC has just completed 12 years into uninterrupted service to mankind.
Since entering its 13th year of service, the technology has never been down. It is now leading the race for crypto adoption worldwide.
In January 2009, Hal Finney became the first person to receive 10 Bitcoin from Satoshi Nakamoto. He was also the second person after Satoshi to run the Bitcoin network.
He later confirmed this in a blog written on Bitcointalk forum post in 2009, “I mined block 70-something, and I was the recipient of the first Bitcoin transaction when Satoshi sent ten coins to me as a test.”
Finney was also the first person to tweet about Bitcoin on 11 January 2009 and it reads, “Running bitcoin”. He passed away due to a rare disease in 2014.
Before Finney, Satoshi Nakamoto was the first to mine the first Bitcoin block on 3 January 2009 and started the P2P digital cash system and the second block was mined by Finney.
It has been years since the first Bitcoin was created, and much has happened since then.
Bitcoin Pizza Day
However, the real use case was first recorded in 2010, when Laszlo Hanyecz purchased two Papa John’s pizzas for 10,000 BTC. The cost of two pizzas was around $40. This became a very popular event and every year 22 May is celebrated as Bitcoin Pizza Day by the crypto community globally.
The Bitcoin history book has recorded this transaction as a real deal conducted with a real company.
Today, the prize of 10,000 BTC is around $419 million, as being traded on Klever Exchange.
2010 to 2020
After eleven years of operations, BTC has been proven as one of the only technologies that can withstand all the ups and downs of the world.
By the end of 2010, the price of one BTC jumped from $0.0008 to $0.83, and looking at the success, many more blockchain-based crypto projects started popping up. Consequently, the technology had the support it wanted, due to the fact that there were competitors to BTC.
In 2012, BTC touched a new high of $250 per BTC, and a new measurement system called milliBitcoins (mBTC), microBitcoins (uBTC), and Satoshis were introduced.
Many say that once the BTC network started running and desired results were met, Satoshi transferred all the rights to the community, which is still going strong. Even today, no one knows if Satoshi Nakamoto was a person or a group. Which country he/group belonged to, the name sounds like Japanese, but some argue that Finney was Satoshi.
A lot of research was done by Satoshi when they decided to limit the supply of BTC to just 21 million. During that period, overall global wealth was around $300 trillion. Satoshi believed that one BTC would reach $10 million and would be enough to be shared among the global population.
Today, over 18.92 million Bitcoins have been mined, leaving only over 2 million available for mining.
Between 2013 to 2015, BTC faced extreme volatility. Climbing to $1164 per BTC in December 2013, BTC crashed to a new low of $315 per BTC.
In 2016, BTC improved and touched $959 in December, and later by 2017, it towered to $19,000, before falling to $3200 in 2018.
In 2019 and 2020, BTC saw a rise to $7122 per BTC and touched $18353 per BTC in December 2020.
The huge development came in 2021 in the midst of a pandemic when the world understood the importance of decentralized technology.
In January 2021, Bitcoin touched $40,000 and when Tesla chief, Elon Musk announced that the company has made a purchase of $1.5 billion worth of BTC, the market touched $50,000. After a few months, Tesla also announced the acceptance of BTC for car bookings, though citing environmental concerns, it, later on, withdrew it.
2021: El Salvador announcing BTC as legal tender
Till now, BTC was only looked at as a private digital currency, but after the announcement of El Salvador in June 2021 by president Nayib Armando Bukele Ortez that BTC has been accorded legal tender in the country, things started moving on.
In September, when the bill was passed by El Salvador adopting BTC as legal tender, BTC was trading at $66,971 and its market capitalization had even crossed $1 trillion during that period.
From the first BTC to daily billion dollars in trading, there is no stopping for BTC. It has become a gem and an undisputed leader in the adoption of cryptocurrency, maybe I say crypto technology in the world today.
Satoshi and the Bitcoin community have been working Kleverly for years and it will be a torchbearer for all who want to change the world by adding value to the technology we have today.
Jagdish Kumar
Klever Writer
Follow me on twitter.com/TokenBharat