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Before bitcoin: thirty years of near misses
Bitcoin did not come from nowhere. It came from a mailing list. In the early 1990s a loose group of programmers, mathematicians and privacy activists who called themselves cypherpunks began arguing, over email, about how to protect individual freedom in a world that was about to move online. Their conviction was that privacy would not be granted by governments or corporations. It would have to be written, as code, and given away.
Money was always part of the plan. If every payment ran through a bank, every payment could be watched. So they tried to build cash for the internet.
DigiCash
David Chaum invented “blind signatures”, which let a bank sign a digital coin without seeing which coin it was signing. His company DigiCash turned the idea into working, private electronic money. It needed a bank to run the mint. Few banks signed up, and DigiCash went bankrupt in 1998.
Hashcash
Adam Back proposed fighting email spam by making each message carry a small proof that the sender’s computer had done some work. Trivial for one email, ruinous for a million. Bitcoin’s mining is Hashcash with a moving target.
b-money
Wei Dai described a currency in which every participant keeps a copy of the ledger and money is minted by solving puzzles. He never built it. It is the first work cited in the bitcoin whitepaper.
Bit gold
Nick Szabo designed a chain of proof-of-work “nuggets”, each built on the last, with ownership recorded in a distributed registry. It is so close to bitcoin that Szabo is the most frequently proposed Satoshi. He denies it.
RPOW
Hal Finney wrote software that let a Hashcash token be reused and passed along like a coin. It ran, but depended on a single trusted server.
Agreement
Each attempt either needed a trusted party or could not stop a determined cheat from spending twice. Nobody knew how to make thousands of anonymous computers agree on one history. That is the problem Satoshi solved.
Nine pages, Halloween 2008
On 31 October 2008, six weeks after Lehman Brothers collapsed, a message appeared on a cryptography mailing list from someone nobody had heard of. Satoshi Nakamoto announced “a new electronic cash system that’s fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party” and linked to a paper.
The paper is nine pages long and has eight references. It does not mention blockchains; it talks about a “chain of blocks” and a “timestamp server”. Its tone is that of an engineer describing a bridge. The reception was polite and sceptical. The list had seen digital cash schemes before, and they had all failed.
Satoshi had been preparing for well over a year. The domain bitcoin.org had been registered in August. Emails to Adam Back and Wei Dai, checking citations, date from the same month. The code, Satoshi later said, was written before the paper, to be sure the thing worked.
Block zero and the first payment
On 3 January 2009, Satoshi mined the first block. Into the one place in it that can hold arbitrary data, Satoshi typed a headline from that morning’s Times of London:
The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banksText embedded in the coinbase of block 0
It works as a timestamp, proving the block could not have been made earlier. Most readers also take it as a statement of purpose. Satoshi never said.
Six days later the software was released. One of the first people to download it was Hal Finney, who had spent years on the same problem. He and Satoshi traded emails and bug reports, and on 12 January Satoshi sent him 10 bitcoin as a test, in block 170. It was the first time bitcoin moved between two people. Finney’s post that week reads, in full, “Running bitcoin”.
For the rest of 2009 the network was a few dozen enthusiasts mining on home computers. Bitcoin had no price. In October a site calculated one from the cost of the electricity needed to mine: about 1,300 coins to the dollar. The following May, a programmer in Florida offered 10,000 of them to anyone who would bring him two pizzas.
Satoshi walks away
Through 2010 Satoshi was a tireless presence on the forum he had set up: fixing bugs, explaining design choices, patching a flaw that had briefly created 184 billion coins. He never revealed anything personal. He wrote careful English with British spellings, kept irregular hours, and deflected every question about himself.
In December 2010, WikiLeaks began accepting bitcoin donations after payment companies cut it off. Satoshi was uneasy at the attention. His last forum post is dated 12 December. In April 2011 he told a developer he had “moved on to other things” and that the project was in good hands. He was never reliably heard from again.
He left behind the code, several hundred posts and emails, and a fortune. Analysis of early blocks suggests one miner, almost certainly Satoshi, collected about 1.1 million bitcoin in the first year. Not one of them has ever moved.
Nobody knows. Newsweek named a retired engineer called Dorian Nakamoto in 2014; he denied ever hearing of bitcoin. An HBO film named developer Peter Todd in 2024. The New York Times named Adam Back in April 2026, and a documentary that month proposed Hal Finney and Len Sassaman working together. Every living candidate denies it, and none of the investigations produced the one thing that would settle the matter: a signature from Satoshi’s keys. Australian Craig Wright spent years claiming the title in court until a British judge ruled in 2024 that he was not Satoshi and had forged evidence. Many bitcoiners hope the question is never answered. A founder who cannot be found cannot be pressured, subpoenaed or followed.
The timeline
Nearly sixty moments, from the first cryptographic cash to this month. Filled dots mark turning points. Filter by era or search for a word.
Blind signatures
David Chaum publishes the cryptography that makes private electronic cash possible. Seven years later he founds DigiCash to sell it.
The first chain of blocks
Stuart Haber and Scott Stornetta describe a way to timestamp documents by chaining their hashes together so nothing can be backdated.
The cypherpunks assemble
A mailing list started by Eric Hughes, Tim May and John Gilmore becomes the meeting place for people who want to defend privacy with code.
Hashcash
Adam Back proposes making email senders burn a little computing power per message to deter spam. The idea is proof of work.
b-money, bit gold, and the fall of DigiCash
Wei Dai sketches b-money and Nick Szabo designs bit gold, both scarce digital money without a central mint. Neither is built. DigiCash, which did have a mint, files for bankruptcy.
Reusable proofs of work
Hal Finney builds RPOW, a working system that lets a Hashcash token be passed from person to person. It still depends on a trusted server.
Lehman Brothers fails
The largest bankruptcy in US history turns a credit squeeze into a global financial crisis and a round of bank bailouts.
The whitepaper
Someone signing as Satoshi Nakamoto posts “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” to a cryptography mailing list. Nine pages. The domain bitcoin.org had been registered that August.
Block zero
Satoshi mines the genesis block. Its only transaction carries a line from that day’s Times of London about a second bank bailout.
The first payment
Satoshi sends 10 BTC to Hal Finney in block 170. For most of the year the network is a handful of hobbyists’ computers.
A first price
A site called New Liberty Standard publishes an exchange rate based on the electricity cost of mining: 1,309 BTC to the dollar. Martti Malmi sells 5,050 BTC for about $5.
Two pizzas
Laszlo Hanyecz pays 10,000 BTC for two delivered pizzas, the first known purchase of a physical thing.
Mt. Gox opens
Jed McCaleb turns a trading-card site into a bitcoin exchange. A mention on Slashdot the same month brings the first wave of outsiders.
The 184 billion bitcoin bug
A flaw lets someone create 184 billion BTC in a single transaction. Satoshi and others patch it within hours and the bad block is abandoned. It remains the most serious bug in the system’s history.
Dollar parity and Silk Road
One bitcoin reaches one US dollar. In the same month an anonymous marketplace called Silk Road opens and gives the currency its first real economy, and its first notoriety.
Satoshi leaves
In a final known email Satoshi says he has “moved on to other things”. Gavin Andresen and a growing group of volunteers carry on.
First bubble, first big hack
The price runs to about $30, then Mt. Gox is breached and the market collapses to $2 by autumn.
First halving
At block 210,000 the reward for mining drops from 50 to 25 BTC, exactly as the code written four years earlier said it would.
Cyprus, a fork and a crash
A software upgrade accidentally splits the chain for six hours before miners coordinate a fix. Weeks later, during the Cypriot banking crisis, the price runs from $40 to $266 and falls by more than half in a day.
The first ETF filing
Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss ask the SEC to approve a fund holding actual bitcoin. The answer will take a decade.
Silk Road falls, $1,000 arrives
The FBI arrests Ross Ulbricht and seizes Silk Road’s coins. The price passes $1,000 for the first time in November. In December China bars its banks from handling bitcoin, and a forum poster misspells “holding”.
Mt. Gox collapses
The exchange that handled most of the world’s trading halts withdrawals and files for bankruptcy, with about 850,000 BTC gone. A long bear market follows. Creditors are still being repaid twelve years later.
Lightning proposed; the block size war begins
Joseph Poon and Tadge Dryja publish the Lightning Network design. In August a rival client, Bitcoin XT, proposes bigger blocks, opening a two-year fight over how bitcoin should scale and who decides.
Second halving
The reward falls to 12.5 BTC. A month later the exchange Bitfinex is robbed of about 120,000 BTC; most are recovered by US investigators in 2022.
Bitcoin Cash splits off
Big-block supporters fork the chain to create Bitcoin Cash. Three weeks later SegWit activates on bitcoin itself after users threaten to reject blocks from miners who would not signal for it.
SegWit2x cancelled, futures launch, $20,000
A corporate-backed plan to double the block size is called off for lack of consensus. Cboe and CME list bitcoin futures. The price peaks just under $20,000 on 17 December.
The long winter
The price falls more than 80 percent to about $3,200 by December. Lightning goes live on the main network in March, and development continues largely out of public view.
Black Thursday
As the pandemic panics every market, bitcoin loses about half its value in a single day.
Third halving
The reward falls to 6.25 BTC, days after Paul Tudor Jones tells investors he is buying.
A software company buys $250 million
MicroStrategy announces it has moved its treasury into bitcoin. Michael Saylor’s company never stops buying.
Tesla, and the first ETF anywhere
Tesla discloses a $1.5 billion purchase. In Toronto, the Purpose Bitcoin ETF becomes the first fund in the world to hold bitcoin directly.
China bans mining
Beijing orders miners to shut down. The network’s hashrate roughly halves in weeks as machines are crated and shipped abroad, mostly to the United States and Kazakhstan. Blocks keep coming. By year’s end the hashrate has fully recovered.
Legal tender in El Salvador
El Salvador becomes the first country to make bitcoin legal tender and begins buying it for the treasury.
First US futures ETF
ProShares’ BITO starts trading in New York, holding futures contracts rather than coins.
A peak near $69,000, and Taproot
The price sets a record on 10 November. Four days later Taproot activates, bringing Schnorr signatures and more private, more flexible scripts. It is still the most recent change to bitcoin’s consensus rules.
The year the lenders failed
The Terra stablecoin implodes in May, taking the lender Celsius and the fund Three Arrows with it. In November FTX collapses in a week. Bitcoin, which none of them issued, falls to about $15,500.
Ordinals
Casey Rodarmor launches inscriptions, letting people embed images and text in transactions. Fees spike, and a lasting argument starts over what counts as spam.
BlackRock files
The largest asset manager in the world applies for a spot bitcoin ETF.
Grayscale beats the SEC
A federal appeals court rules that the regulator’s refusal to approve a spot fund, after approving futures funds, was arbitrary.
Spot ETFs approved
The SEC approves eleven spot bitcoin funds at once. They begin trading the next morning and take in billions within weeks.
A record before the halving
Driven by ETF demand, the price passes its 2021 high and tops $73,000. It is the first time a new record has come before a halving rather than after.
Fourth halving
At block 840,000 the reward falls to 3.125 BTC. The Runes token protocol launches in the same block and fees briefly dwarf the subsidy.
Old coins come to market
Mt. Gox’s trustee finally begins repaying creditors, and the German state of Saxony sells roughly 50,000 seized BTC. Donald Trump tells a bitcoin conference in Nashville he would create a national stockpile.
$100,000
A month after the US election, and weeks after options on spot ETFs begin trading, bitcoin crosses six figures.
A new administration
Gary Gensler leaves the SEC. Ross Ulbricht is pardoned. An executive order sets up a working group on digital assets and bars a US central bank digital currency.
The Bybit theft
Hackers linked by the FBI to North Korea take about $1.5 billion, mostly in ether, from the exchange Bybit. It is the largest crypto theft on record and a reminder of custodial risk across the industry.
The Strategic Bitcoin Reserve
President Trump signs an order creating a reserve from bitcoin the government already holds through forfeiture, with a rule that it not be sold. It authorises only “budget-neutral” ways of adding more.
Congress acts, partly
The GENIUS Act on stablecoins becomes law. The House passes the CLARITY market-structure bill 294 to 134. The SEC lets crypto ETFs create and redeem shares in kind.
The record: about $126,000
Bitcoin sets its all-time high to date.
The $19 billion liquidation
Four days later a tariff shock triggers the largest forced unwinding of leveraged positions in crypto’s history. On the same day Bitcoin Core 30 is released, lifting the default limit on data in OP_RETURN outputs and deepening a rift with Bitcoin Knots users.
The largest forfeiture
US prosecutors move to forfeit about 127,000 BTC tied to an alleged scam network in Cambodia, the biggest such action the Justice Department has brought.
Vanguard relents
The last big brokerage holdout opens its platform to crypto ETFs. Twenty One Capital lists in New York.
A hard winter, a milestone, a warning
The price slides to about $60,000 in February amid a wider sell-off in technology shares. Around 9 March the 20 millionth bitcoin is mined at block 940,000. On 31 March Google researchers publish sharply lower estimates of the quantum computer needed to break bitcoin’s signatures.
A bank-issued ETF, and another Satoshi theory
Morgan Stanley launches its own spot fund at the lowest fee yet. The same day the New York Times names Adam Back as its candidate for Satoshi. He denies it.
The low
Bitcoin touches about $58,000, more than half below its peak, as Strategy reports multi-billion-dollar paper losses and several treasury companies trade below the value of their coins.
BIP-110 fails
A “user-activated” soft fork to restrict data in transactions reaches its deadline with about 2 percent of miners signalling. Its supporters’ chain produces two blocks and stops. The episode is read as a test of who governs bitcoin, and of how little appetite there is for contested change.
Washington stalls
A Senate procedural vote on the CLARITY Act fails 49 to 50. The next day a House committee advances a bill to write the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve into law, by 28 to 21.
One year on
Twelve months after the record, bitcoin has recovered from its June low but remains roughly a third below the peak. Hester Peirce leaves the SEC. The network keeps producing a block about every ten minutes, as it has since 2009.
No events match.
What the history shows
Read the timeline end to end and a few patterns repeat.
- The disasters happen at the edges. Mt. Gox, Bitfinex, Celsius, FTX: every great loss was a company holding other people’s coins. The protocol itself has not been successfully attacked since the bug of August 2010.
- It moves in cycles. A run-up, a blow-off, a fall of half or more, a long quiet stretch, then a new record. Peaks came in 2011, 2013, 2017, 2021 and 2025. Past cycles do not guarantee future ones, and each has had different causes.
- Bans have not worked. China has restricted bitcoin repeatedly since 2013 and outlawed mining in 2021. The network rerouted every time.
- Change keeps getting harder. SegWit took two years of conflict. Taproot took four years of quiet consensus-building. Since then, nothing. The failed fork of 2026 suggests the bar is higher still.
- The outsiders became insiders. A system designed to route around banks is now held by BlackRock, sold by Morgan Stanley and stockpiled by the US Treasury. Whether that is victory or capture is the liveliest argument in bitcoin today.
To meet the people behind these events, go to the people of bitcoin. For the ETF story in full, see bitcoin ETFs.