Bitcoin: history, founders and key events

Origin story

Bitcoin began with a nine page paper posted to a cryptography mailing list on October 31, 2008 under the name Satoshi Nakamoto. It described electronic cash that moves directly between people, with no bank in the middle, kept honest by a public ledger that miners extend with proof of work.

The network went live on January 3, 2009, when Nakamoto mined the genesis block. A newspaper headline about bank bailouts was embedded in it, which many read as a statement of purpose. Nakamoto worked with early contributors such as Hal Finney, who received the first ever bitcoin transaction, and Gavin Andresen, who later took over as lead maintainer. Nakamoto stopped posting in 2011 and has never been identified.

Bitcoin's rules are simple to state: a new block about every ten minutes, a block reward that halves every 210,000 blocks, and a hard cap of 21 million coins. Those rules explain much of the history below, from the halvings to the fights over block size.

Founders: Satoshi Nakamoto (pseudonymous).