Bitcoin began with a white paper and has been running for more than a decade. Along the way, there have been many milestones worth remembering: the first block, the first transaction, the first purchase made with Bitcoin, and several important protocol upgrades.
Corresponding currency: $BTC price 76,252.76 (24h -5.37%).
📌 From the White Paper to the Genesis Block
On October 31, 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto published the Bitcoin white paper (Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System), proposing a form of electronic cash that does not rely on a central authority.
On January 3, 2009, the Bitcoin genesis block was created, with the headline from that day's Times embedded in it. On January 12 of the same year, block 170 recorded the first person-to-person Bitcoin transfer: Satoshi Nakamoto sent Hal Finney 10 bitcoins.
📌 From Pizza to a Split
On May 22, 2010, a programmer traded 10,000 bitcoins for two pizzas. This was one of the early examples of Bitcoin being used to buy something in the real world. The day later became known as “Bitcoin Pizza Day.”
In 2017, the community became sharply divided over how to scale Bitcoin. On August 1, Bitcoin underwent a hard fork, creating Bitcoin Cash (BCH). On August 24, Segregated Witness (SegWit) activated at block height 481824.
📌 Several Important Upgrades
SegWit separated signature data from the transaction body, replaced the original block size limit with “block weight,” and fixed the transaction malleability problem. It also paved the way for Layer 2 solutions such as the Lightning Network.
On November 14, 2021, the Taproot upgrade activated at block height 709632. It introduced Schnorr signatures, making transactions such as multisig transactions look more like ordinary transfers on-chain while also taking up less space.
📌 Reaching More People
In early 2023, the Ordinals protocol made it possible to inscribe data such as images and text into Bitcoin transactions, followed by the emergence of BRC-20 tokens. In January 2024, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved the first spot Bitcoin ETFs. Later that year, on April 20 (UTC), Bitcoin completed its fourth halving at block height 840000.
📌 A Few Final Words
Looking back at these milestones, we can see that every major change to Bitcoin requires broad acceptance from developers, miners, and node operators before it can be implemented. No single group can decide on its own. Verify information with multiple sources before taking action, and don’t rely on just one perspective.
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