Happy Genesis Block Day
On October 31, 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto published the Bitcoin white paper. Shortly later on January 3, 2010, exactly 10 years ago from today, Bitcoin officially came to live with its very first block mined.
At that time, Satoshi probably had never imagined the chain events that Bitcoin would set off — all the altcoins, ICOs, crypto trading markets, STOs, and a lot more blockchain applications that follow. Today’s blockchain ecosystem would never bloom if Bitcoin never existed.
But like its creator, the mystery in the genesis block remains unsolved.
The genesis block is the first-ever block mined in the Bitcoin blockchain, and is also known as block #0. It contains the first 50 BTCs, but they are unspendable. After the original block is mined, the subsequent block took 6 days to mine. And what makes the genesis block shrouded in mystery is the secret message Satoshi left in the block:
“The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks”
The text is an allusion to the headline of The Times, January 3, 2009 edition. Alistair Darling, the then-Chancellor of UK’s Exchequer, was considering a second bailout for the banks. Although Satoshi never commented on the secret message, many people interpreted it as a mocking of the fractional reserve banking and the governments’ incapability to recover the economy after the 2008 financial crisis.
The secret message cemented not only the birth of Bitcoin, but also Satoshi’s vision — a decentralized currency that could not be bailed out, without any middleman or central authority. Bitcoin will lead us to an entirely new economy.
A lot has happened over the 10 years after Bitcoin’s birth. Though many of us still only care about the prices of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, the underlying technology, blockchain, is already changing our economy and the entire world humbly.
2018 has been a roller-coaster ride for everyone in the crypto industry. We hope that in 2019, we’ll see more quality projects and innovations of blockchain fulfilling Satoshi’s vision of Bitcoin and blockchain.
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