Kickstarting the Bitcoin Network: a glance at the Genesis Block and Source Code That Sparked a Monetary Revolution

13 years past these days, the anonymous creator of the Bitcoin protocol kickstarted the network by mining the genesis block. Satoshi started the genesis block on Saturday, January 3, 2009, at exactly 1:15 p.m. (EST), and since then over 700,000 blocks have been strip-mined into existence.

Kickstarting the Bitcoin Network

Today, bitcoiners and cryptocurrency advocates worldwide are celebrating the thirteenth day of the Bitcoin network’s launch. At the present time, thirteen years past, Bitcoin’s discoverer Satoshi Nakamoto launched the genesis block, otherwise referred to as “block zero.” There are many distinctive characteristics of the genesis block that build it completely different from the blocks that followed.

For instance, the genesis block features a fifty BTC block reward grant which will ne’er be spent. Block zero conjointly has 2 a lot of leading hex zeroes within the hash that was common for bitcoin blocks strip-mined within the period. The genesis block conjointly contains a special message held within the coinbase parameter. The message derives from a London Times Jan three, 2009 headline and reads:

“The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.”

Seven-Day Theory, Timechain, Virtual Poker

Many people are unaware that the Bitcoin protocol didn’t manufacture another block till six days ago when the genesis block was strip-mined. It’s assumed Satoshi had a reason for this wait time, because it resembles one thing out of autocracy lore or the King James Bible’s Genesis tale once the world was created in seven days.

Satoshi Nakamoto strip-mined the Bitcoin network with a regular pc or central process unit (CPU). it’s assumed Nakamoto was a Microsoft user, and therefore the protocol’s codebase was written within the cryptography language C++. in addition to the cryptography language, users leveraged a Windows GUI mining application to mine BTC blocks long ago.

When bitcoiners examined a pre-code unleash before Jan. 3, 2009, distributed to bitcointalk.org member “Cryddit,” a variety of attention-grabbing findings were discovered. For example, the document mentioned the term “bitcoin miner” for the primary time, and it conjointly remarked the blockchain as a “timechain.” The pre-release Bitcoin ASCII text file conjointly contained the early framework for IRC consumer, a peer-to-peer (P2P) marketplace, and a virtual card game.

Additionally, consistent with Bitcointalk.org user Deepceleron on Dec. Dec. 23, 2013, and some alternative armchair sleuths, “there’s no text file to recover off Sourceforge through the net Archive, however here’s a screenshot from Jan three, 2009, (same date as genesis), with a suppressed blockchain at block 213 and 3 alternative connections.” It’s assumed by some that Nakamoto and a few early users might have tested the blockchain launch before Jan three, 2009.

Bitcoin Protocol Sees several Milestones in thirteen Years, procedure Power Achieves Exponential Growth

Last year, on the twelfth day of the genesis block, a mystery laborer spent 1,000 BTC from 2010 when the bitcoin property sat idle for a decade. The thirteenth day follows BTC’s life value high on Nov ten, 2021, once the crypto plus abroach $69K per unit. What is more, on Jan one, 2022, the network’s hashrate reached Associate in Nursing incomparable high of over two hundred exahash per second.

On Jan nine, 2009, Bitcoin’s hashrate was around sixty eight.96 kilohash per second (KH/s) or 68,000 (sixty-eight thousand) hashes per second (H/s). That conjointly equates to around 0.068 megahash per second (MH/s) or 0.000068 gigahash per second (GH/s), too low of a denomination to live in terahash per second (TH/s).

Whoever was mining at this point on Jan nine, 2009, and therefore the following week (we assume it had been Satoshi Nakamoto), was still dedicating a lot of procedure power than it’d want mine bitcoin (BTC) with paper and pencil (0.67 hashes per day) or a Nintendo Game Boy (0.8 H/s). Since that day on Jan nine, 2009, the network’s hashrate has grown exponentially stronger by a thumping 267 quadrillion %.