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The very first Blockchain was Bitcoin, and to this day it has remained the dominant Cryptocurrency by virtue of it being the first in and best dressed. The asset enjoys 41% of the cryptocurrency market cap followed directly by Ethereum with 20% of the market cap. The first trace of Bitcoin goes back to a Cryptography Blog post by someone or a group of people who called themselves Satoshi Nakamoto back in November of 2008, and to this day his identity is unknown. An Australian by the name of Craig Wright has claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto however this is widely disputed and indeed doubted amongst the community.
According to the White Paper for Bitcoin, the asset was described as a "purely peer to peer version of electronic cash that would allow online payments to be directly from one part to another without going through a financial institution". At this, Bitcoin has excelled as well as becoming a speculative asset class and forging the path for numerous and successful blockchain technology projects to boom. Today, that has resulted in a whopping 2.3 Trillion Dollar market cap for all cryptocurrencies. A princely and impressive sum indeed.
The benefits of removing the need for a third party and centralised authority to transact between parties are numerous, including reduced fees, removing control and limitations, censorship by authoritarian states and economic freedom. All that is required is for members to have faith and continue to participate in its peer to peer network. What's even better than the traditional finance system is that a public and verifiable LEDGER of transactions is maintained which is open for anyone to interrogate and confirm that every transaction is valid and fair. A boast which traditional finance cannot claim itself. The ledger is made up of blocks that are mined by Bitcoin Miners which further contributes to the decentralised properties of the blockchain meaning that no one single party has control over the blockchain. I have even set my gaming PC up to profitably mine Ethereum at home over the previous 8 months and taken my mining pool rewards in Bitcoin. This further demonstrates the benefit of Cryptocurrencies in that there are very low or no barriers to entry, even the unbanked can transact fairly and openly on the blockchain.
All of the transactions are compiled into hashes and these hashes make up a block, when these are verified or mined by Miners they are submitted to the Blockchain, this prevents double-spending (spending value they do not possess), and this is the only way that Bitcoin can be created (from securing the network).
The first version of Bitcoin Blockchain was coded in C++ (Version 0.1) and published on SourceForge.net in January of 2009 as an open-source download, meaning anyone could download it for free and contribute to the network by providing a node to the network. At this time the first mining rewards were 50 Bitcoin which in today value of around $2,500,000.
Up until 2010, Satoshi had written all of the code for the Blockchain and then handed it over to a collective of intelligent blockchain folk on Bitcoin.org and the current most popular iteration of the Bitcoin Client still exists there today (Version 0.15.1), and there are more than 11,000 nodes active today.
On the 22nd May 2010, Laszlo Hanyecz of Jacksonville USA made the first document transaction of Bitcoin for a real-world good: Pizza. He posted a thread online on a Bitcoin Forum asking if anyone wanted to 10,000 Bitcoin ($BTC) for a couple of Pizzas. At the time the 10,000 BTC were worth around $40, but today those same 10,000 BTC are now worth around $490,000,000. On the off chance that someone still wants to make a trade using the same aforementioned terms, I'd be happy to send you as much as a thousand Pizzas and I'll even stretch to Stuffed Crust and extra dips. Just let me know, okay?
This is a huge step for the adoption of Bitcoin, so thank you Laszlo!
If you can't beat them, join them. In the decade that followed, with continued and exponential adoption and growth for the digital asset of Bitcoin and the rise of alt-coins, despite continued fear-mongering by the media, governments and financial institutions, it appears that central banks around the world are coming to terms with the fact that Bitcoin is here to stay. Most developed western governments are now in the process of either exploring or launching CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currencies) to try and rival Bitcoin and stop the bleed from their fiat currencies to crypto.
Did you know: The US Dollar is the worlds most transacted currency for illegal activity by market share? You would be forgiven for thinking it was Bitcoin if you listen to the sensationalist media.
Essentially, a CBDC is just a rebrand for a fiat currency, but with more traceability and more centralisation, and I cannot think of anything more dangerous or potentially destructive to us plebs than the adoption of such a technology. Even during COP26, CBDC's were mentioned as a tool to combat climate change, perhaps by restricting purchases for certain items or consumables deemed non-essential by Big Brother. As a firm believer in the invisible hand of the free market, I think that the better asset will prevail.
Most people read George Orwell's 1984 as a cautionary tale, but the elites seem to regard it as an instruction manual. This only serves to highlight the importance of keeping our currency decentralised and distributed.
I publish regularly right here on Publish0x and on Please do remember that none of the above is financial advice, you should always do your due diligence.
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