U.Today – On January 12, 2009, a revolutionary milestone occurred that would forever change the landscape of digital finance. Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator(s), performed the first peer-to-peer (P2P) transaction on the Bitcoin network.
At this historic moment in block 170, Satoshi transferred 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 happened 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 early adopters of Bitcoin, installing software and participating in conversations that would improve Bitcoin.
On January 10, 2009, Finney made history with the first Bitcoin-related tweet: “running Bitcoin.”
The Genesis Block, also known as Block 0, was mined by Satoshi Nakamoto on January 3, 2009. Similar to subsequent Bitcoin blocks, it rewarded 50 BTC, but this can never be spent.
16 years later
Finney received 10 BTC from Satoshi, which in 2009 would be worth zero dollars. Depending on market conditions, the same amount of Bitcoin can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars today.
Sixteen years later, Bitcoin has developed into a global financial phenomenon with a current market valuation of around $1.84 trillion.
At the time of writing, BTC is down 1.45% in the last 24 hours to $92,560 after setting an all-time high of $108,268 on December 17th.
As for the price of Bitcoin, on a macroeconomic front, this week will give investors a clearer picture of the state of the economy after last week’s jobs report sent stocks down. A stronger-than-expected nonfarm payrolls report raised concerns that the Federal Reserve may remain cautious going forward, casting doubt on further rate cuts.
