No.001
Bitcoin BTC
The first chapter of every crypto story ยท 'digital gold'
๐ญ An old coin who has been running since 2009 and remembers every block since the very first one
๐ฌ โBlock one was January 3rd, 2009. I count from there. Everything after me is just a sequel.โ
- The saga starts on 3 January 2009, when the first block was mined.
- No government, no bank, computers all over the world keep the ledger together.
- Only 21 million coins will ever exist, which is why it's nicknamed 'digital gold'.
๐ The Story
Bitcoin's story is best read like a logbook. A few dates do most of the work.
31 October 2008. A nine-page paper appears on a quiet mailing list, signed by someone calling themselves 'Satoshi Nakamoto'. It describes money that needs no bank and no government. Nobody can prove who Satoshi was, then or now.
3 January 2009. The very first block is mined. Tucked inside it is a line of text: "Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks." It was that morning's newspaper headline, frozen into the chain forever, a small message about why this new money existed at all.
22 May 2010. A programmer pays 10,000 BTC for two pizzas. It is the first time anyone trades the coin for something you can hold. People still mark the day every year.
From there the rule never bent: only 21 million coins will ever exist, mined a little at a time by computers around the world. Satoshi went quiet around 2011 and never came back. The chain, meanwhile, has kept adding a block roughly every ten minutes since 2009, kept alive not by an owner but by everyone running it at once.
๐ Stats
๐งฉ How it works
Bitcoin runs with no central authority. Payments pile up, then computers all over the world (the miners) verify them and seal a batch into a block. That block is locked onto the end of the chain, and the whole cycle starts over, roughly every ten minutes, on and on since 2009. Once something is written there, nobody can change it.
๐ Light & Shadow
- It has run since 2009 without a single day off. That track record is the whole point.
- The 21 million cap is fixed. No one gets to quietly print more and water it down.
- More people buy and sell it than any other coin, so getting in and out is easy.
- It was built for safety, not speed, so it handles only a handful of payments at a time (about 7 per second)
- The price can rise and fall sharply, sometimes within a single week
- Keeping the network secure burns a lot of electricity
๐งญ Meet other friends
โ FAQ
- What is Bitcoin?
- The first cryptocurrency, launched in 2009. It is digital money with no central authority, computers all over the world keep the shared ledger together.
- How many bitcoins are there in total?
- The supply is capped at 21 million coins. No more can ever be created, which is why it's called 'digital gold'.
- Where can I buy Bitcoin?
- You can buy it on major exchanges like Coinbase, Kraken, or Binance. (This is general information, not advice to use any particular exchange or to invest.)
โ ๏ธ Not investment advice. All figures are for information only.