History of bitcoin

Overview

Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, a digital asset that uses cryptography to control its creation and management rather than relying on central authorities. Originally designed as a medium of exchange, Bitcoin is now primarily regarded as a store of value. The history of bitcoin started with its invention and implementation by Satoshi Nakamoto, who integrated many existing ideas from the cryptography community. Over the course of bitcoin's history, it has undergone rapid growth to become a significant store of value both on- and offline. From the mid-2010s, some businesses began accepting bitcoin in addition to traditional currencies.

Background

Prior to the release of bitcoin, there were a number of digital cash technologies, starting with the issuer-based ecash protocols of David Chaum and Stefan Brands. The idea that solutions to computational puzzles could have some value was first proposed by cryptographers Cynthia Dwork and Moni Naor in 1992.

Adam Back

The idea was independently rediscovered by Adam Back who developed hashcash, a proof-of-work scheme for spam control in 1997. The first proposals for distributed digital scarcity-based cryptocurrencies were Wei Dai's b-money and Nick Szabo's bit gold. Hal Finney developed reusable proof of work (RPOW) using hashcash as proof of work algorithm. In the bit gold proposal which proposed a collectible market-based mechanism for inflation control, Nick Szabo also investigated some additional aspects including a Byzantine fault-tolerant agreement protocol based on quorum addresses to store and transfer the chained proof-of-work solutions, which was vulnerable to Sybil attacks, though.

Creation and launch, 2008–2009

On 18 August 2008, the domain name bitcoin.org was registered. Later that year, on 31 October, a link to a paper authored by Satoshi Nakamoto titled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System was posted to a cryptography mailing list. This paper detailed methods of using a peer-to-peer network to generate what was described as "a system for electronic transactions without relying on trust". On 3 January 2009, the bitcoin network came into existence with Satoshi Nakamoto mining the genesis block of bitcoin (block number 0), which had a reward of 50 bitcoins. Embedded in the genesis block was the text: "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks." The text refers to a headline in The Times published on 3 January 2009. This note has been interpreted as both a timestamp of the genesis date and a derisive comment on the instability caused by fractional-reserve banking. The first open source bitcoin client was released on 9 January 2009, hosted at SourceForge. One of the first supporters, adopters, contributors to bitcoin and receiver of the first bitcoin transaction was programmer Hal Finney. Finney downloaded the bitcoin software the day it was released, and received 10 bitcoins from Nakamoto in the world's first bitcoin transaction on 12 January 2009 (block 170). Other early supporters were Wei Dai, creator of bitcoin predecessor b-money, and Nick Szabo, creator of bitcoin predecessor bit gold. One of the first miners included James Howells, who subsequently lost thousands of Bitcoin to a landfill in Newport. Before disappearing from any involvement in bitcoin, Nakamoto in a sense handed over the reins to developer Gavin Andresen, who then became the bitcoin lead developer at the Bitcoin Foundation, the "anarchic" bitcoin community's closest thing to an official public face.

Satoshi Nakamoto

"Satoshi Nakamoto" is presumed to be a pseudonym for the person or people who designed the original bitcoin protocol in 2007 then released the whitepaper in 2008 and finally launched the network in 2009. Nakamoto was responsible for creating the majority of the official bitcoin software and was active in making modifications and posting technical information on the bitcoin forum. There has been much speculation as to the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto and their real identity remains a matter of dispute.

2010

The first notable retail transaction involving physical goods took place on 22 May 2010. Laszlo Hanyecz, a programmer in Jacksonville, Florida, posted on the Bitcointalk forum offering 10,000 of his mined bitcoins in exchange for two pizzas. A 19-year-old in California named Jeremy Sturdivant accepted the offer and ordered two Papa John's pizzas for delivery to Hanyecz's home, receiving the 10,000 BTC in exchange. At the time, the bitcoins were worth around $41. The date is commemorated annually as "Bitcoin Pizza Day". On 6 August 2010, a major vulnerability in the bitcoin protocol was spotted. While the protocol did verify that a transaction's outputs never exceeded its inputs, a transaction whose outputs summed to more than

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would overflow, permitting the transaction author to create arbitrary amounts of bitcoin. On 15 August, the vulnerability was exploited; a single transaction spent 0.5 bitcoin to send just over 92 billion bitcoins (

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satoshis) to each of two different addresses on the network. Within hours, the transaction was spotted, the bug was fixed, and the blockchain was forked by miners using an updated version of the bitcoin protocol. Since the blockchain was forked below the problematic transaction, the transaction no longer appears in the blockchain used by the current Bitcoin network.

2011

Based on bitcoin's open-source code, other cryptocurrencies started to emerge. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit group, started accepting bitcoins in January 2011, then stopped accepting them in June 2011, citing concerns about a lack of legal precedent about new currency systems. The EFF's decision was reversed on 17 May 2013 when they resumed accepting bitcoin. In May 2011, bitcoin payment processor, BitPay was founded to provide mobile checkout services to companies wanting to accept bitcoins as a form of payment. In June 2011, WikiLeaks and other organizations began to accept bitcoins for donations.

2012

In January 2012, bitcoin was featured as the main subject within a fictionalized trial on the CBS legal drama The Good Wife in the third-season episode "Bitcoin for Dummies". The host of CNBC's Mad Money, Jim Cramer, played himself in a courtroom scene where he testifies that he does not consider bitcoin a true currency, saying, "There's no central bank to regulate it; it's digital and functions completely peer to peer". In September 2012, the Bitcoin Foundation was launched to "accelerate the global growth of bitcoin through standardization, protection, and promotion of the open source protocol". The founders were Gavin Andresen, Jon Matonis, Mark Karpelès, Charlie Shrem, and Peter Vessenes. In October 2012, BitPay reported having over 1,000 merchants accepting bitcoin under its payment processing service. In November 2012, WordPress started accepting bitcoins.

2013

In February 2013, the exchange Coinbase reported selling US$1 million worth of bitcoins in a single month at over $22 per bitcoin. The Internet Archive announced that it was ready to accept donations as bitcoins and that it intends to give employees the option to receive portions of their salaries in bitcoin currency. In Charles Stross's 2013 science fiction novel Neptune's Brood, the universal interstellar payment system is known as "bitcoin" and operates using cryptography. Stross later blogged that the reference was intentional, saying "I wrote Neptune's Brood in 2011. Bitcoin was obscure back then, and I figured had just enough name recognition to be a useful term for an interstellar currency: it'd clue people in that it was a networked digital currency." In March 2013, an incompatibility between versions 0.7 and 0.8.0 caused a temporary split in the blockchain; normal operation resumed after most miners downgraded to version 0.7. In the US, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) established regulatory guidelines for "decentralized virtual currencies" such as bitcoin, classifying American bitcoin miners who sell their generated bitcoins as Money Service Businesses (or MSBs), that may be subject to registration and other legal obligations. In April, payment processors BitInstant and Mt. Gox experienced processing delays due to insufficient capacity, contributing to sharp price volatility. Bitcoin gained greater recognition when services such as OkCupid and Foodler began accepting it for payment. In April 2013, Eric Posner, a law professor at the University of Chicago, stated that "a real Ponzi scheme takes fraud; bitcoin, by contrast, seems more like a collective delusion." On 15 May 2013, the US authorities seized accounts associated with Mt. Gox after discovering that it had not registered as a money transmitter with FinCEN in the US. On 17 May 2013, it was reported that BitInstant processed approximately 30 percent of the money going into and out of bitcoin, and in April alone facilitated 30,000 transactions, On 23 June 2013, it was reported that the US Drug Enforcement Administration listed 11.02 bitcoins as a seized asset in a United States Department of Justice seizure notice pursuant to 21 U.S.C. § 881. This was the first time a government agency was reported to have seized bitcoin. In July 2013, a project began in Kenya linking bitcoin with M-Pesa, a popular mobile payments system, in an experiment designed to spur innovative payments in Africa. During the same month the Foreign Exchange Administration and Policy Department in Thailand stated that bitcoin lacks any legal framework and would therefore be illegal, which effectively banned trading on bitcoin exchanges in the country. On 6 August 2013, Federal Judge Amos Mazzant of the Eastern District of Texas of the Fifth Circuit ruled that bitcoins are "a currency or a form of money" (specifically securities as defined by Federal Securities Laws), and as such were subject to the court's jurisdiction, and Germany's Finance Ministry subsumed bitcoins under the term "unit of account" – a financial instrument – though not as e-money or a functional currency, a classification nonetheless having legal and tax implications. In October 2013, the FBI seized roughly 26,000 BTC from website Silk Road during the arrest of alleged owner Ross William Ulbricht. Two companies, Robocoin and Bitcoiniacs launched the world's first bitcoin ATM on 29 October 2013 in Vancouver, BC, Canada, allowing clients to sell or purchase bitcoin currency at a downtown coffee shop. Chinese internet giant Baidu had allowed clients of website security services to pay with bitcoins. In November 2013, the University of Nicosia announced that it would be accepting bitcoin as payment for tuition fees. During November 2013, the China-based bitcoin exchange BTC China overtook the Japan-based Mt. Gox and the Europe-based Bitstamp to become the largest bitcoin trading exchange by trade volume. In December 2013, Overstock.com announced plans to accept bitcoin in the second half of 2014. On 5 December 2013, the People's Bank of China prohibited Chinese financial institutions from using bitcoins. After the announcement, the value of bitcoins dropped, and Baidu no longer accepted bitcoins for certain services. Buying real-world goods with any virtual currency had been illegal in China since at least 2009. On 4 December 2013, Alan Greenspan referred to it as a "bubble".

2014

In January 2014, Zynga announced it was testing bitcoin for purchasing in-game assets in seven of its games. That same month, The D Las Vegas Casino Hotel and Golden Gate Hotel & Casino properties in downtown Las Vegas announced they would also begin accepting bitcoin, according to an article by USA Today. The article also stated the currency would be accepted in five locations, including the front desk and certain restaurants. The network rate exceeded 10 petahash/sec. TigerDirect and Overstock.com started accepting bitcoin. The same month, an operator of a U.S. bitcoin exchange, Robert Faiella better known as Charlie Shrem, was arrested for money laundering. In early February 2014, one of the largest bitcoin exchanges, Mt. Gox, suspended withdrawals citing technical issues. By the end of the month, Mt. Gox had filed for bankruptcy protection in Japan amid reports that 744,000 bitcoins had been stolen. Months before the filing, the popularity of Mt. Gox had waned as users experienced difficulties withdrawing funds. In June 2014, the network exceeded 100 petahash/sec. On 18 June 2014, it was announced that bitcoin payment service provider BitPay would become the new sponsor of St. Petersburg Bowl under a two-year deal, renamed the Bitcoin St. Petersburg Bowl. Bitcoin was to be accepted for ticket and concession sales at the game as part of the sponsorship, and the sponsorship itself was also paid for using bitcoin. In July 2014, Newegg and Dell started accepting bitcoin. In September 2014, TeraExchange, LLC, received approval from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission "CFTC" to begin listing an over-the-counter swap product based on the price of a bitcoin. The CFTC swap product approval marks the first time a U.S. regulatory agency approved a bitcoin financial product. In December 2014, Microsoft began to accept bitcoin to buy Xbox games and Windows software. In 2014, several light-hearted songs celebrating bitcoin such as the "Ode to Satoshi" were released. A documentary film, The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin, was released in 2014, featuring interviews with bitcoin users such as a computer programmer and a drug dealer. On 13 March 2014, Warren Buffett called bitcoin a "mirage".

2015

In January 2015, Coinbase raised US$75 million as part of a Series C funding round, smashing the previous record for a bitcoin company. Less than one year after the collapse of Mt. Gox, United Kingdom-based exchange Bitstamp announced that their exchange would be taken offline while they investigate a hack which resulted in about 19,000 bitcoins (equivalent to roughly US$5 million at that time) being stolen from their hot wallet. The exchange remained offline for several days amid speculation that customers had lost their funds. Bitstamp resumed trading on 9 January after increasing security measures and assuring customers that their account balances would not be impacted. In February 2015, the number of merchants accepting bitcoin exceeded 100,000. In 2015, the MAK (Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna) became the first museum to acquire art using bitcoin, when it purchased the screensaver "Event listeners" of van den Dorpel. In September 2015, the establishment of the peer-reviewed academic journal Ledger (ISSN 2379-5980) was announced. It covers studies of cryptocurrencies and related technologies, and is published by the University of Pittsburgh. In October 2015, a proposal was submitted to the Unicode Consortium to add a code point for the bitcoin symbol.

2016

In January 2016, the network rate exceeded 1 exahash/sec. In March 2016, the Cabinet of Japan recognized virtual currencies like bitcoin as having a function similar to real money. In July 2016, the CheckSequenceVerify soft fork activated. In August 2016, a major bitcoin exchange, Bitfinex, was hacked and nearly 120,000 BTC (around $60m) was stolen.