Yesterday was the Bitcoin whitepaper’s 13th birthday! It’s officially a teenager. The whitepaper may be just a mere nine pages long but Bitcoin has completely disrupted the world for the better!
Let’s look at the journey so far!
November 1st, 2008.
The white paper was released by Satoshi Nakamoto, a pseudonymous person, 13 years ago today. It was released to a cryptography mailing list hosted by Metzdow. If you want to read the white paper, click right here.
It started purely as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system as it was titled. The focus is on decentralising payments without having to trust or rely on third parties like financial institutions. Nakamoto truly threw light on how much decentralisation is more beneficial than centralisation. This came incidentally right after the financial crisis of 2008 that crippled not just the American economy, but had a global impact. Bitcoin truly was the need of the hour that couldn’t have come at a better time.
The popularity of Bitcoin grew steadily over time. This was because it provided a simple solution to a very complex problem. Discussions began to grow among the cyber community.
The ups and downs
Hal Finney, a well known-name in the community today, was a key developer of Bitcoin. He was the first after Nakamoto himself to run a copy of the network through a node. This was the very first transaction. Finney received 10 Bitcoins from Nakamoto for this historic transaction, which is worth $620,000 or ₹4.6 crores today. Finney unfortunately passed away from ALS in 2014.
Bitcoin was at times met with skepticism. For instance, another developer Laszlo Hanyecz posted on Bitcointalk forum offering “10,000 Bitcoin for a couple of pizzas.”
At the time, 10,000 bitcoins weren’t the cost of 2 pizzas that Laszlo was craving. The bitcoin community was small then and was treading lightly. But Laszlo successfully received his 2 pizzas and traded 10,000 BTC for it! That transaction is worth over $600+ million just for two pizzas. That truly shows the journey of Bitcoin from back then to now. So now May 22th is celebrated as Bitcoin Pizza Day to mark this truly one of a kind transaction!
Bitcoin today
Bitcoin has come a very long way in being one of the most popular financial digital assets. And let’s not forget it has not been the most easy journey, however it is a trillion dollar industry today. Bitcoin’s market cap is $1.2 trillion. It goes beyond just Bitcoin, the creation of Bitcoin has led to the birth of 1000s of cryptocurrencies. The cryptocurrency industry is a multi-trillion dollar industry.
It wasn’t that long ago that our CEO said Bitcoin would reach Rs 1 crore by 2030, back when BTC crossed 9 lakhs for the first time.
90 lakhs in 9 years was certainly possible back then. 50 lakhs in 8 years, most definitely is achievable.
The progress has been championed with the support of a humongous community of innovative developers. Along with the institutional investors and businesses who have embraced and recognised Bitcoin as an asset class.
What does the future look like?
There is a lot more in store for Bitcoin as time progresses. El Salvador started accepting Bitcoin as a legal tender. The Bitcoin lightning, a layer-two scaling solution has been launched. The Taproot upgrade is also set to go live in November to enhance smart contract compatibility, general security, etc. Bitcoin ETFs are also live trading on the New York Stock Exchange. It became the second-most heavily traded fund on record in its debut.
A lot of huge milestones and progress has been made. It seems like there has been a lot of breakthrough of huge magnitude, but at this point we’re barely scratching the surface. The potential is unlimited and we can’t wait to continue this journey.
So, what are you waiting for? Buy some Bitcoin today!
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