Bitcoin - 15 years and counting: Key facts to know about the first cryptocurrency in the world
Bitcoin completed 15 years of its existence. Although the maiden crypto token trades above $41,500 per unit in the international crypto exchanges, its glory was conspicuously missing in the early days of inception. Did you know that the first-ever transaction carried out 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 three years and ten months for bitcoin to touch $1,000 for the first time? Cut to Jan 10, 2024, US markets regulator Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) gave a green signal to spot bitcoin ETF, garnering an investment to the tune of $4.6 billion within a couple of days.
Bitcoin’s creator Satoshi Nakamoto (pseudonym used by the inventor) released a whitepaper titled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System on October 31, 2008 to a cryptography mailing list. In fact, Satoshi took two years writing the code before he completed the last task i.e., the white paper. He even mentioned that he was working on bitcoin for two years by the time the white paper was finally released, writing: “I actually did this kind of backwards.
I had to write all the code before I could convince myself that I could solve every problem, then I wrote the paper." 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 is reduced by 50 percent about every four years. The creator designed it to create its scarcity to increase its demand and price. Even before bitcoin came into being, several digital cash technologies were released with David Chaum’s e-cash being the
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