New to Bitcoin? Start at 1.1
6.7Lesson 7 of 8
History you can check
This lesson answers
- What was the bitcoin pizza transaction?
- What is in Bitcoin's first block?
- What happened in the Bitfinex hack?
- Can you look up old bitcoin transactions?
- When were the bitcoin halvings?
Every payment since 3 January 2009 is still in the record, in order, and anyone running a node can check it. The chain records amounts, times and addresses. Names come from outside it: people's own posts, court records and companies' own lists.
- Blocks since the first one
- …
- Days since the first block
- …
- Confirmations on the first payment
- …block 170
- 1 bitcoin today
- …US dollars
The 10,000 bitcoin paid for two pizzas in 2010 would be worth 10,000 times that price today.
See it on satoshis.watch →The early years
| When | On the chain | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| 3 Jan 2009 | Block 0 | The first block, with a newspaper headline about bank bailouts written into it. See what Bitcoin is. |
| 12 Jan 2009 | Block 170 | The first payment between two people: 10 bitcoin to Hal Finney, who described it himself in 2013. See how a payment works. |
| 22 May 2010 | Block 57,043, transaction a1075db5…d48d | Laszlo Hanyecz pays 10,000 bitcoin for two pizzas, as he had offered on the Bitcoin forum. The payment gathers 131 small pieces into one output of exactly 10,000, with a 0.99 bitcoin fee. The date is now marked as Bitcoin Pizza Day. |
| 15 Aug 2010 | Block 74,638 | A bug lets one transaction create about 184 billion bitcoin. A fix comes out within hours and the block is replaced. See can Bitcoin be hacked? |
Markets, thefts and seizures
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 2011 to 2013 | Silk Road, an online black market that took bitcoin, runs until the FBI shuts it down in 2013. In 2020 US prosecutors move to seize about 69,000 bitcoin that a hacker had taken from it years earlier. |
| February 2014 | Mt. Gox, then the largest exchange, stops withdrawals and says about 850,000 bitcoin are missing. Its trustee starts repaying customers in 2024. |
| August 2016 | About 120,000 bitcoin are stolen from the exchange Bitfinex. In 2022 US authorities arrest two people and seize most of the coins. |
The halvings
| Block | Date | New bitcoin per block after |
|---|---|---|
| 210,000 | 28 November 2012 | 25 |
| 420,000 | 9 July 2016 | 12.5 |
| 630,000 | 11 May 2020 | 6.25 |
| 840,000 | 20 April 2024 | 3.125 |
The next comes at block 1,050,000; see how many bitcoin there are for a live countdown. For the upgrades of 2017 and 2021, see forks and upgrades.
Check yourself
Practice, not a test. Think of your answer first, then reveal it.
1Where does the name of a person behind a payment come from, if the chain only records addresses?Reveal
From outside the chain: the person's own posts, court records, or a company's own published list. The chain itself records amounts, times and addresses.
2What fee did the pizza payment pay?Reveal
0.99 bitcoin, a fee nobody would choose today, since fees then were set by hand and coins were worth very little.
3Why can anyone still check a payment from 2009?Reveal
Every node keeps the full record from the first block, and nothing in it can be changed without redoing all the work since.
Sources
- Hal Finney, Bitcoin and me, bitcointalk.org, March 2013.
- Laszlo Hanyecz, Pizza for bitcoins?, bitcointalk.org, May 2010.
- The 2010 overflow: Strange block 74638, bitcointalk.org, August 2010.
- US Department of Justice: Silk Road-linked forfeiture (November 2020) and Bitfinex hack arrests and seizure (February 2022).
- Mt. Gox: the trustee's official notices.
- Blocks 0, 170, 57,043 and the halving blocks, the pizza transaction and the newest block: read from a Bitcoin node.