Bitcoin: The First Cryptocurrency Timeline

Bitcoin: The First Cryptocurrency 23

2008 Satoshi Nakamoto publishes the Bitcoin white paper "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System" is sent to a cryptography mailing list A person or group using the name Satoshi Nakamoto shared a nine-page paper describing a digital currency that needs no trusted third party. The design used proof-of-work and a timestamped chain of blocks to prevent double-spending.
2009 Bitcoin genesis block is mined Block 0 launches the Bitcoin network Satoshi Nakamoto mined the first block of the Bitcoin blockchain, which pays a reward of 50 bitcoins. The block contains a London Times headline about a second bank bailout, widely read as a comment on the financial crisis.
2009 First Bitcoin transaction sent to Hal Finney Satoshi Nakamoto sends 10 bitcoins to the cryptographer in block 170 Satoshi Nakamoto sent 10 bitcoins to the computer scientist Hal Finney, the first transaction between two people on the network. Finney was one of the earliest people to run the Bitcoin software.
2010 Bitcoin Pizza Day: 10,000 bitcoins buy two pizzas Laszlo Hanyecz makes the first known purchase of real goods with bitcoin Programmer Laszlo Hanyecz in Florida paid 10,000 bitcoins for two Papa John's pizzas. It is the first widely recognised purchase of physical goods with bitcoin, and 22 May is now celebrated as Bitcoin Pizza Day.
2011 Satoshi Nakamoto withdraws from the Bitcoin project The creator's last known messages to developers say he has moved on In private emails to fellow developers, Satoshi Nakamoto said he had moved on to other things, and then stopped communicating. Development passed to a community of volunteers led at first by Gavin Andresen. Satoshi's identity has never been confirmed.
2012 First Bitcoin halving Block reward falls from 50 to 25 bitcoins at block 210,000 As written into the protocol, the reward for mining a new block was cut in half for the first time. Halvings happen every 210,000 blocks, about every four years, and slow the creation of new coins.
2014 Mt. Gox collapses and files for bankruptcy The world's largest Bitcoin exchange loses about 850,000 bitcoins Tokyo-based Mt. Gox, which once handled most of the world's Bitcoin trading, halted withdrawals and filed for bankruptcy protection after reporting that about 850,000 bitcoins were missing. The collapse was the industry's first great crisis of trust.
2016 Second Bitcoin halving Block reward falls from 25 to 12.5 bitcoins at block 420,000 The second scheduled halving cut the mining reward to 12.5 bitcoins per block. The following year saw the largest bull market Bitcoin had experienced up to that point.
2017 Bitcoin Cash splits from Bitcoin in a hard fork The block-size dispute divides the Bitcoin community After years of dispute over how to scale the network, a group of miners and developers created Bitcoin Cash, a separate chain with larger blocks. Weeks later the main chain activated the Segregated Witness (SegWit) upgrade instead.
2017 Bitcoin price surges near 20,000 dollars Cryptocurrency mania peaks before sharp crash Bitcoin's price rose from roughly 1,000 dollars at the start of the year to nearly 20,000 dollars in mid-December, driven by speculative retail investment. The surge brought cryptocurrency into mainstream public awareness for the first time. Prices collapsed sharply in the weeks that followed.
2018 Bitcoin bottoms out after the 2018 crypto crash The price falls more than 80% from its December 2017 peak A crash that lasted all year took Bitcoin to about 3,200 dollars in December 2018, more than 80% below its peak. The collapse wiped hundreds of billions of dollars off the value of the cryptocurrency market and began a long 'crypto winter'.
2020 Third Bitcoin halving Block reward falls from 12.5 to 6.25 bitcoins at block 630,000 The third halving happened in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, as central banks expanded the money supply. Bitcoin went on to new record highs in 2021, helped by companies such as MicroStrategy and Tesla buying it.
2021 El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender First country to adopt Bitcoin as official currency Under President Nayib Bukele's Bitcoin Law, El Salvador became the first country to make Bitcoin legal tender alongside the US dollar. The government launched the Chivo wallet and began buying bitcoin for its treasury.
2021 Taproot upgrade activates on the Bitcoin network The largest protocol upgrade since SegWit adds Schnorr signatures The Taproot soft fork brought Schnorr signatures and more efficient, more private smart-contract scripts to Bitcoin. It was the network's first major upgrade in four years.
2022 FTX collapses into bankruptcy The fall of Sam Bankman-Fried's exchange deepens the crypto winter The cryptocurrency exchange FTX filed for bankruptcy after a run on deposits exposed a multibillion-dollar shortfall in customer funds. Bitcoin fell to about 16,000 dollars, and founder Sam Bankman-Fried was later convicted of fraud.
2024 US SEC approves spot Bitcoin ETFs Wall Street funds holding actual bitcoin are cleared for trading The US Securities and Exchange Commission approved eleven spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds, including products from BlackRock and Fidelity, and trading began the next day. The funds drew tens of billions of dollars of institutional and retail money into Bitcoin.
2024 Fourth Bitcoin halving Block reward falls from 6.25 to 3.125 bitcoins at block 840,000 The fourth halving cut the reward for mining a block to 3.125 bitcoins. By then more than 93% of all bitcoins that will ever exist had already been mined.
2024 Bitcoin passes 100,000 dollars for the first time The price crosses six figures after the US presidential election Bitcoin rose above 100,000 dollars for the first time, boosted by hopes for crypto-friendly policies after Donald Trump's election victory. The milestone came less than a year after spot ETFs were approved.
2025 Trump orders a US Strategic Bitcoin Reserve An executive order sets up a national reserve from seized bitcoin President Donald Trump signed an executive order creating a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, funded with bitcoin the federal government had seized in criminal and civil cases. The order said these holdings should not be sold.
2025 Bitcoin reaches an all-time high above 126,000 dollars The record peak of the post-halving cycle Bitcoin reached a record of about 126,000 dollars, driven by inflows into ETFs and buying by corporate treasuries. Days later a market-wide crash of leveraged positions pushed the price sharply lower, and a year later it was still about 30% below the peak.
2028 Fifth Bitcoin halving (expected) Block reward is due to fall from 3.125 to 1.5625 bitcoins at block 1,050,000 The fifth halving is due at block 1,050,000 and is currently expected around April 2028. The exact date depends on how fast blocks are mined. New issuance will drop to about 225 bitcoins a day.
2032 Sixth Bitcoin halving (expected) Block reward is due to fall from 1.5625 to 0.78125 bitcoins at block 1,260,000 The sixth halving is due at block 1,260,000, about four years after the fifth, and is expected in 2032. Each halving keeps Bitcoin's issuance on its fixed, falling schedule.
2140 Last bitcoin expected to be mined The block subsidy reaches zero and supply is capped at 21 million After 32 more halvings, the reward for new blocks is expected to reach zero around the year 2140, when the last fraction of a bitcoin is mined. After that, miners will be paid only through transaction fees.