A brief history of Bitcoin :
2008 :
- The bitcoin.org domain name is registered
- Satoshi Nakamoto’s original Bitcoin paper is published
- The Bitcoin Project is registered at sourceforge.net
2009 :
- The Genesis block is established on January 3rd at 18:15:05 GMT
- The first Bitcoin client (bitcoind v0.1) is released
- The first Bitcoin transaction is performed in block 170, from Satoshi Nakamoto to Hal Finney
- The first difficulty increase occurs on December 30th, from 1.00 to 1.18289953 in block 32256
2010 :
- The first Bitcoin currency exchange site (Bitcoin Market) is established
- OpenGL GPU hash farm is established by ArtForz and GPU mining begins
- A vulnerability in Bitcoin is exploited to generate 184 billion bitcoins — the bug is quickly fixed
- Pooled mining begins
2011 :
- Bitcoin reaches parity with the US dollar for the first time (1 USD = 1 BTC)
- Bitcoin generation difficulty passes 1 million for the first time in June 2011
- The first Bitcoin Conference and World Expo is held in New York City
2012 :
- The Bitcoin Foundation is established in September 2012
- The First Bitcoin Halving Day is observed on November 28th, with block 210000 having a block reward of 25 BTC. The next scheduled Halving Day will be observed in 2016, when block reward halves to 12.5 BTC in block 420000.
2013 :
- A hard fork of reference client v0.8.0 occurs; network updates within a few hours
- The total Bitcoin market capitalization exceeds US $1 billion
- Bitcoin mining difficulty passes 1 billion in December 2013
2014 :
- Bitcoin mining difficulty passes 35 billion
2015 :
- NASDAQ announces blockchain-based platform “NASDAQ LINQ” for private securities issuance
- New York State releases “BitLicense”, which outlines the rules Blockchain startups should follow within the state
- Bitcoin is exempt from VAT, according to rules imposed by the European Court of Justice
2016 :
- OpenBazaar is released in April as the first decentralized marketplace accepting Bitcoin as a payment method
- Craig Wright fraudulently claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto by displaying a private key signing, attempting to present it as Satoshi’s keys
- In July 9, 2016, the second halving occurred as the block reward was reduced to 12.5 bitcoins per block
- The largest Bitcoin exchange by volume to date, Bitfinex, was hacked and 119,756 bitcoins were stolen
2017 :
- Bitcoin broke the $1000 mark in early January 2017, for the first time since 2014
- Japan categorized bitcoin as legal tender, after long disputes between regulators and crypto exchanges
- A Bitcoin code split initiated Bitcoin Cash in August 1st, with the aim to support blocks of up to 8MB
- CME Group announced the launch of Bitcoin futures in late October 2017
2018 :
- Facebook, Google and Twitter ban crypto advertisements to protect investors from ICO scams.
- More than 80% of the total Bitcoin supply has been mined by January 2018.
- US Securities and Exchange Commission says crypto exchanges must register with agency as exchanges.
