Earlier this month, bitcoin celebrated 15 years of its existence. Although the inaugural crypto token trades above $41,500 per unit on international crypto exchanges, its glory was conspicuously absent in the early days of its creation.
Did you know that the first transaction made in bitcoins took place on May 22, 2010 when 10,000 bitcoins were paid to buy two Papa John's pizzas? Did you also know that it took bitcoin three years and ten months to reach $1,000 for the first time?
Cut to January 10, 2024, the US markets regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), gave a green signal to Spot bitcoin ETFobtaining an investment of the order of 4.6 billion dollars within a couple of days.
How was bitcoin introduced?
The creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto (pseudonym used by the inventor), published a white paper titled Bitcoin: a peer-to-peer electronic cash system on October 31, 2008 to a crypto mailing list.
In fact, it took Satoshi two years to write the code before completing the last task, i.e. White paper.
He even mentioned that he had been working on bitcoin for two years when the whitepaper was finally published, writing: โI actually did this backwards. "I had to write all the code before I could convince myself I could solve all the problems, then I wrote the article."
He implemented the bitcoin software as open source code and released it in January 2009. Nakamoto's identity remains unknown.
The total number of bitcoins is limited to 21 million. And by design, the number of bitcoins minted per block drops by 50 percent roughly every four years. The creator designed it to create scarcity and increase its demand and price.
Previous attempts before bitcoin
Even before bitcoin When it emerged, several digital cash technologies were launched, with David Chaum's e-cash being the first in the 1980s. In fact, the very idea that solutions to computational puzzles could have some value was first proposed by cryptographers Cynthia Dwork and Moni Naor in 1992.
Another attempt was made in 2004, when Hal Finney developed the first reusable proof-of-work-based currency. It should be noted that these attempts were not successful.
Satoshi did not use the term 'cryptocurrency'
It is intriguing to know that the terms 'blockchain' and 'cryptocurrency' were never used in the bitcoin White paper. Instead, Satoshi calls the blockchain a timestamp server.
Surprisingly, Satoshi named bitcoin quite late in the process and it is believed that he wanted to refer to it as "electronic cash" or "netcoin."
In fact, in the first emails Satoshi sent to other scientists for review, bitcoin was referred to as "electronic cash," a term that has been used since the 1990s.
Where is the creator of bitcoins now?
Although Satoshi never revealed his identity, there are speculations suggesting that Satoshi is in fact the first bitcoin user, Hal Finney or mathematician John Nash.
There are unconfirmed estimates that Nakamoto had already mined almost a million bitcoins before disappearing a year later in 2010, but only after handing over the network's alert key and control of the code repository to Gavin Andresen.
Gavin later became a lead developer for the Bitcoin Foundation, an organization founded in September 2012 to promote bitcoin.
What experts say about bitcoin turning 15
Some of the industry representatives. MintGenie spoke to believe that bitcoin will play an important role in the financial industry in the near future. Thanks to the approval of Spot bitcoin ETF by the US markets regulator and the subsequent influx of billions of dollars, there are expectations that bitcoin will soon regain its all-time high of $67,566.83 that it touched on November 8, 2021.
Shivam Thakral, CEO of BuyUcoin, says: โBitcoin's future relevance depends on its ability to face challenging circumstances, regulatory acceptance and adjustment to the changing environment will determine its continued importance. "Despite competition and volatility, its well-established brand, scarcity and technical potential indicate that it will likely continue to play an important role in the financial industry in the future."
ALSO READ: Bitcoin ETF approval: Indian investors can also participate โ here's how
โAs Bitcoin turns 15 this year, it has demonstrated remarkable resilience in its journey as an asset class, from the fringes of crypto-punk communities to being touted as a 'digital haven' by the world's largest asset manager. world, Blackrock. The journey has been volatile with shadow bans, regulatory scrutiny and mining disruptions; but the network continues to operate with almost no downtime," says Parth Chaturvedi, investment leader at CoinSwitch Ventures.
โThe algorithmically coded supply schedule has run like clockwork and with an upcoming supply halving, we can expect the historical price cycle to repeat itself. Spot ETF approvals might have been a 'sell the news' event in the short term, but with over $10 billion in volume flow in the first week of trading, BTC has cemented its place in diversified, risk-adjusted portfolios ", Add.
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Posted: Jan 22, 2024, 01:27 pm IST
