Pakinomist – On January 12, 2009, a groundbreaking milestone occurred that would forever change the landscape of digital finance. Satoshi Nakamoto, pseudonymous creators, performed the first peer-to-peer (P2P) transaction on the Bitcoin network.
This historic moment at block 170 saw Satoshi transfer 10 BTC to computer scientist Hal Finney, making him the recipient of the first Bitcoin transaction. As was common in the early days, the transaction cost 0 BTC.
This first transaction came three days after the first open source Bitcoin client was released online. On January 9, 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto released version 0.1 of the Bitcoin software. Finney was one of the first Bitcoin users to install the software and participate in conversations that would improve Bitcoin.
On January 10, 2009, Finney made history with the first ever Bitcoin-related tweet: “running Bitcoin.”
The Genesis Block, also known as Block 0, was mined by Satoshi Nakamoto on January 3, 2009. Like subsequent Bitcoin blocks, it rewarded 50 BTC, but it can never be spent.
16 years after
Finney received 10 BTC from Satoshi, which would have been worth zero dollars in 2009. Depending on market conditions, the same amount of Bitcoin today could be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Sixteen years later, Bitcoin has evolved into a global financial phenomenon with a current market cap of around $1.84 trillion.
At the time of writing, BTC was down 1.45% in the last 24 hours to $92,560 after setting all-time highs of $108,268 on December 17th.
As for the Bitcoin price, this week on the macroeconomic front will give investors a clearer picture of the state of the economy after a blowout jobs report last week sent stocks tumbling. The stronger-than-expected non-farm payrolls report raised concerns that the Federal Reserve could continue to tread cautiously going forward, casting doubt on further interest rate cuts.
