The Origins
A Summary of Bitcoin’s History
The word Bitcoin means different things to different people. Some will see it as an asset whilst others use it for computation or as a data source. Many will use it as a distributed cash system and developers will use the ledger as a database. Applications will run on smart contracts and artists will create hypermedia and NFTs. Historically, many people have traded Bitcoin knowing relatively little about it, whilst others see its value as a medium of exchange, an attestable source of truth, provenance or integrity; an immutable data network or a persistent, distributed database. Either way, a notable list of key events over the years is below.
The Timeline
2022 onwards
Bitcoin sets numerous World Records
Numerous world records have now been set on Bitcoin’s original protocol including regularly surpassing 50,000 transactions a second, the largest blocks (+2GB), largest NFT (1GB) and the lowest environmental impact of any proof-of-work (POW) chain.
February 2020
Genesis Upgrade
The Genesis upgrade restored the original Bitcoin Protocol as closely as possible to Satoshi’s original design, locking it down to create stability for developers and enterprises to build upon. Unbounded scaling returned, as did the original Bitcoin script language that allows developers to build on-chain applications easier.
November 15th, 2018
BSV remains as Bitcoin, BCH forks away
Bitcoin SV (BSV) becomes the new ticker symbol for the original Bitcoin Protocol when BCH decided to divert from Bitcoin’s white paper, introduce non-Bitcoin compliant features which included introducing anonymity that hinders government and financial regulation. This is why it’s considered Bitcoin’s Independence Day.
August 1st, 2017
BCH remains as Bitcoin, BTC forks away
“Segregated Witness” or SegWit, was designed to remove the tracing capabilities of Bitcoin allowing the introduction of off-chain, opaque exchange solutions such as the Lightning Network. The introduction of this broke Bitcoin’s original protocol and clearly renders BTC as non-Bitcoin compliant and intentionally ineffective.
December 2010
Satoshi gets concerned and takes a sabbatical
Dr. Craig S. Wright was very explicit about his concerns that Bitcoin was being infiltrated by anonymous developers, criminals misusing it and that it had become associated with projects like WikiLeaks. This distortion of his tool was unacceptable and thus removed himself from the project to ‘venture into more complex ideas’ like the Metanet.
8th January 2009
Bitcoin white paper released
The vision for what Bitcoin is, and supposed to be, was outlined by its inventor Dr. Craig S. Wright, using the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, in the white paper entitled “Bitcoin: A Peer to Peer Electronic Cash System”. Four months later the first open source Bitcoin client software is released.