Bitcoin's Genesis: How Digital Money Came to Be

The Beginnings (1980s-2008)

Bitcoin didn't just appear out of nowhere. Back in 1982, this guy David Chaum wrote about something that looked kind of like blockchain in his dissertation. Pretty forward-thinking for the time.

The 90s got interesting. Chaum created ecash - anonymous digital money. Then Adam Back made Hashcash in '97. It seems this proof-of-work thing would matter a lot later. Wei Dai and Nick Szabo were dreaming big too, with "b-money" and "bit gold" ideas. They wanted money without middlemen.

Hal Finney stepped things up in 2004. Reusable proof-of-work. Getting warmer. But everything before Bitcoin had problems. Centralization issues. Double-spending risks. Not quite there yet.

Bitcoin Arrives (2008-2009)

The banking system was melting down in 2008. Perfect timing? Someone registered bitcoin.org in August. Then boom - Halloween 2008. "Satoshi Nakamoto" drops the Bitcoin whitepaper. Who was this mysterious person? We still don't know.

Satoshi didn't invent everything from scratch. The genius was putting the pieces together in just the right way. January 3, 2009 - the genesis block gets mined. It had a message about bank bailouts from The Times newspaper. Making a point there, Satoshi?

Nine days later, the first Bitcoin transaction. Satoshi to Hal Finney. 10 bitcoins. No banks involved. Back then, Bitcoin wasn't worth much. Someone tried selling 10,000 BTC for fifty bucks in March 2010. No takers. Ouch.

Finding Its Feet (2010-2014)

The pizza purchase! May 22, 2010. Laszlo Hanyecz paid 10,000 BTC for two pizzas. Worth billions now. We celebrate "Bitcoin Pizza Day" every year because of this guy.

Not everything went smoothly. August 2010 saw a major bug. Someone created over 184 billion bitcoins! The community fixed it fast. Crisis averted.

By 2012, Bitcoin was getting noticed. It showed up on TV. The Bitcoin Foundation formed. WordPress started taking Bitcoin payments. Progress.

Bitcoin hit $1,000 in 2013. Milestone! But the blockchain split temporarily that March. Growing pains. Regulators started paying attention too.

Then disaster. Mt. Gox collapsed in February 2014. They lost 744,000 bitcoins. Devastating. But weirdly, this made Bitcoin stronger in the long run. Lessons learned.

Getting Sophisticated (2015-2021)

Over 100,000 merchants accepted Bitcoin by early 2015. Not bad. Then in August 2017, a technical upgrade called SegWit activated. Better scalability. Lightning Network possibilities.

Not everyone agreed on Bitcoin's future direction. This led to Bitcoin Cash splitting off in August 2017. Different vision. December brought Bitcoin futures on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Wall Street was paying attention.

2020 changed everything. Companies started putting Bitcoin on their balance sheets. MicroStrategy went in with $250 million. Square added $50 million. MassMutual put in $100 million. Tesla joined with a massive $1.5 billion in February 2021.

PayPal opened Bitcoin to its 346 million users in October 2020. El Salvador made Bitcoin legal tender in September 2021. First country to do so. Bold move.

The Big Leagues (2022-2025)

January 2024 was huge. After years of trying, Bitcoin ETFs finally got approved in the US. Eleven funds launched. BlackRock's IBIT became one of the most successful ETF launches ever. Period.

The fourth halving happened in April 2024. Mining rewards dropped to 3.125 bitcoins per block. But Bitcoin had already hit new highs above $73,000 in March. Different pattern this time.

The 2024 election shifted things toward crypto-friendly policies. By December, Bitcoin broke $100,000. First time ever. $103,679 to be exact.

As of September 2025, we're looking at $123,000 Bitcoin. Record high was set in July. The old four-year cycles don't seem to matter as much anymore. Institutions have changed the game. Bitcoin's not as volatile as it used to be. Maturing.

In 16 years, Bitcoin went from a weird internet experiment to a trillion-dollar asset class. It's kind of surprising how much it's changed our ideas about money itself.