The Journey of Bitcoin (BTC) – The most popular cryptocurrency in the World

Interestingly, it is obvious that Bitcoin has radically changed the way people carry out transactions. Its advent has helped to facilitate transactions between various parties and has promises of lowering transaction fees than the traditional online payment systems. It is amongst the first cryptocurrencies that uses the peer-to-peer technology to facilitate payment. It is not controlled by the government, but operated by a decentralised system.

Have you ever wondered how this trending crypto currency evolved? The events below defines the Bitcoin Ecosystem.

•      31st October, 2008 (Halloween Day) – Bitcoin White Paper
  

The cryptocurrency (Bitcoin) was first introduced to the public through an academic white paper by a person with the alias Satoshi Nakamoto. The paper proposed a solution to the double spending (through the use of a third party in the traditional system) using a peer-to-peer network. The proposal included explanation of the following ;
• Transactions
• Timestamp Server
• Proof-of-Work
• Network
• Incentive
• Reclaiming Disk Space
• Simplified Payment Verification
• Combining and Splitting Value
• Privacy
• Calculations
This serve as the groundwork for the digital currency.

•      3rd January, 2009 – The Genesis Block
  

Two months after the release of the white paper, the first bitcoin was mined by Satoshi and the evidence of the activity
was recorded on the public ledger (blockchain) with a reward of 50 BTC. This activity was referred to as “The Genesis
Block” or "Block 0". Although this activity was not regarded as being official, on 12 January, 2009, Hal Finney (a
cryptographer) downloaded the bitcoin software and received a total of 10BTC from Satoshi. This was the first official
bitcoin transaction.

•      31st October, 2014 -BitcoinWeen
  

One year after the publication of the first white paper, Bitcoin users celebrated its first anniversary. This was done thru a social media movement dubbed #BitcoinWeen and the design of the classic Bitcoin symbol on pumpkins. The movement was sparked on October 28th when Nic Cary, the CEO of Blockchain called for Jack-O-Lantern carvings which was inspired by either the Blockchain or Bitcoin. He also offered to donate $500 in BTC to a charity. Although Bitcoinween was a one year event, the cryptocurrency is a classic transaction medium for non-profit organisations.

Source: www.coindesk.com

•      22nd May, 2010 – The Bitcoin Pizza Day
  

The above stated date is a remarkable day in the journey of Bitcoin. This is because the first good that is documented as being purchased with Bitcoin was Pizza. In May, 2010, Laszlo (a BitcoinTalk.org user) offered to pay anyone who would order 2 pizzas for him, the sum of 10,000 BTC (I wish I was opportune to get the coin as at then Smiles). This was during the infancy of Bitcoin. The offer for the Bitcoin-to-Pizza transaction which was delivered by Papa John was accepted on 22nd May, 2010 and this marked the beginning of the use of Bitcoin as a day to day currency. The transaction was worth 250 BTC for $1 as at that time.

Source: News.bitcoin.com

•      6th August, 2010 – Major Vulnerability detection
  

On August, 2010, a major vulnerability was spotted in the bitcoin protocol. This vulnerability caused improper verification of transaction before their inclusion in the blockchain, hence allowing users to bypass the bitcoin’s economic restrictions and create an indefinite number of bitcoins.

•      15th August, 2010 – Exploitation of Vulnerability
  

The major vulnerabilities that was spotted was exploited by hackers and over 184 billion BTC was generated in a transaction and sent to two addresses on the network. Due to the security measures implemented in the system, the transactions were spotted and deleted from the transaction log within hours after the bug was fixed. The network forked to an updated version of the bitcoin protocol.

•      November, 2012 – Halving
  

Halving is part of the process of mining Bitcoin which occurs about once in every 210, 000 blocks or once in four years. As BTC miners are for each every transaction block the validate, the amount they receive is divided into half during halving. November 2012 marked the first halving and this reduced the reward of miners by half (from 50 btc to 25 btc).

•      9 July, 2016 – Halving
  

The second halving event made the miners reward to reduce by half again (i.e. 12.5 btc). The halving reward increasingly makes bitcoin difficult to mine. The rise in the utility and demand of bitcoin, creates scarcity, which significantly influences the market value of bitcoin.

Source: thehalvening.com

The next event in the journey of Bitcoin may be the 1st August, 2017. This is not covered in this edition of the article, but will be documented after the event.

I hope this article has been able to Steem you up briefly on the Journey of the most popular cryptocurrency. Please endeavour to upvote this article if you liked it. Thanks

Jondo (@ekpezu) – Researching Cryptocurrencies