Cryptocurrency and non-fungible tokens are all the rage in the world at this moment. People are becoming millionaires overnight due to their wise investments and trading techniques. This month marked the 13th year of the most prolific and popular cryptocurrency, Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is definitely not the first cryptocurrency out there but it has become the blueprint for the rest of the cryptocurrency coins that followed it.
Over the course of the past 13 years, Bitcoin has definitely undergone some extremely rapid changes in its growth to become a significant store of value online and offline as well.
What Are The Origins Of The Cryptocurrency?
Before the currency came into existence, various other digital cash technologies based on the ecash protocols of David Chaum and Stefan Brands existed.
Cryptographers Cynthia Dwork and Moni Naor were the first ones to propose the idea that the solutions to computational puzzles could have some amount of value associated with them.
The domain name, ‘bitcoin.org’ was registered on the 18th of August, 2008 as later that same year a paper titled ‘Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System’ authored by someone using the presumed pseudonyms of Satoshi Nakamoto was posted to the same link on the 31st of October. This paper came to be known as the Bitcoin White Paper.
Finally, the Bitcoin Network came into official existence on the 3rd of January, 2009 with Satoshi Nakamoto being the first person to mine the genesis block of bitcoin which is block number 0 gaining a reward of 50 bitcoins.
Hal Finney, a programmer, was the absolute first supporter, adopter, receiver and contributor in association with Bitcoin. He downloaded the software the very day it was released and essentially, received 10 bitcoins from Satoshi Nakamoto on the 12th of January, 2009 marking the world’s first Bitcoin transaction.
Nakamoto is said to have mined 1 million Bitcoins in the early days before disappearing from the scene and ceasing all involvement with the cryptocurrency in the public eye. Gavin Andersen was a developer who then assumed the reins and became the lead bitcoin developer at the Bitcoin Foundation, the community’s closest thing to an official public representation.
What Do We Know About Satoshi Nakamoto?
“Satoshi Nakamoto” is said to be the pseudonym for the person or group of persons who designed the basis of the bitcoin protocol and launched the network.
The person is responsible for creating the majority of the official software and was extremely active in posting technical information and making modifications on the bitcoin forum.
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A lot of discussions and investigations have been launched to find out the real identity behind the pseudonym with Hal Finney being one of the suspects amongst a strong litany of denial from him.
The New Yorker and Fast Company attempted the most prolific investigations with the New Yorker bringing up at least two possible candidates and the Fast Company highlighting circumstantial evidence linking an encryption patent application filed by Neal King, Vladimir Oksman and Charles Bry on the 15th of August, 2008.
The patent application contained encryption technologies and networking similar to that of bitcoin’s and analysis revealed that the phrase, “computationally impractical to reverse” appeared in both the patent application and the Bitcoin White Paper. All three of the inventors strongly and explicitly denied having any connections to Satoshi Nakamoto.
What Has Bitcoin’s Impact On The World Been Since It Was Released?
Bitcoin has come a long way since its first retail transaction on the 22nd of May, 2010 when 10,000 mined BTC were exchanged for 2 pizzas from a local restaurant in Florida marking the day as Bitcoin Pizza Day for the crypto-fans. At the time, the transaction’s value was typically negotiated only on the Bitcoin forum.
Commentators have been calling the Bitcoin prices a bubble as the market valuation of the total stock of Bitcoins approached US$1 billion. An economic bubble is essentially a situation when the prices of an asset are much higher than the basic fundamentals of it can reasonably justify. The price per bitcoin dropped from $266 to around $50 and then rose to $100 in the early days of April 2013.
The price dropped again in the late weeks of June and then steadily kept rising till the FBI seized The Silk Road which was an online black market and the first modern darknet market.
This seizure of the website caused a flash crash of the prices which quickly rebounded within a couple of weeks. Bitcoin passed US$1000 for the first time on the 28th of November, 2013.
The birth of Bitcoin has helped generate over 6000 altcoins so far and has ushered in a digital revolution globally. The Bitcoin White Paper is one of the most innovative papers published until now and it has been referenced in various crypto networks.
The biggest financial institutions in the world are currently striving to adapt Nakamoto’s concepts and many governments are trying to produce their own version of blockchain technology.
Cryptocurrencies, especially Bitcoin, have become the world’s preferred investment avenues. El Salvador has become the first country to treat Bitcoin as legal tender as countries have started discussing the potential of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies being used as a legal form of exchange.
However, critics of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency as a whole still argue that it is a risky and speculative asset to invest in and do not recommend investing more than one can afford to lose.
Milestones Bitcoin Achieved In 2021
Bitcoin has managed to become a legendary blueprint for all cryptocurrencies out there since its launch in 2009. Some of Bitcoin’s most important achievements were achieved in the last year. For the first time since its launch, the cryptocurrency managed to surpass US$1 trillion of market valuation on February 19, 2021.
Later in November 2021, the price of the entire bitcoin stock hit US$3 trillion and the price per bitcoin reached $69,044 which enabled the price of the cryptocurrency to hit an all-time high.
The milestone came into being after major investors and notable financial companies began to support the cryptocurrency earlier in the year. Companies like Tesla, Square and MicroStrategy started using their balance sheets to buy cryptocurrency.
Morgan Stanley, an American multinational investment bank and financial services company, became the first bank to offer its customers and clients access to bitcoin funds after the investment bank’s client made demands to achieve exposure to bitcoin. The bank then launched access to three funds that lead to ownership of Bitcoin.
Bitcoin received its first highly-anticipated update since 2017 called Taproot which went into effect in November. Taproot introduced Schnorr signatures, which help transactions become more private, efficient and less expensive than before.
The upgrade also allows Bitcoin to execute ‘smart contracts’, which are a collection of codes that carry out a set of instructions on the blockchain.
Last but not the least, reportedly 90%of the total Bitcoin supply of 21 million has been mined according to the data presented on blockchain.com. However, do not worry about losing out on cryptocurrency. Experts do not expect the remainder to be mined before February 2140. Miners can definitely continue to earn Bitcoins till then.
Bitcoin exists and works on a proof-of-work model which means that miners must compete to solve a series of complex math problems to validate any transactions. It is definitely not an easy process as reaching the 90% milestone took more than a decade.
Disclaimer: THIS STORY IS FACT CHECKED
Image Sources: Google Images
Sources: CNBC, Times Of India, Coin Telegraph, Coin Geek +more
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