Genesis: The Block That Minted Bitcoin
By Laxmikant Khanvilkar
The Bitcoin turned 14 on January 3 this year. On this day in 2009, the first bitcoin was mined by Satoshi Nakamoto, the anonymous creator of the cryptocurrency. He minted the first block of the Bitcoin blockchain, referred to as the Genesis Block, which had 50 bitcoins worth zero dollars.
Introduction of Bitcoin resulted in creation of different channels. Dubbed as technology driven activity, many associated activity took off. On March 17, 2010, the first cryptocurrency exchange, Bitcoinmarket, went live. Bitcoin became tradeable in April 2010, when the price was around 0.3 cents each.
Currently, the flagship cryptocurrency is hovering around $16,800, a roughly 73% drop from its all-time high above $69,000 in November 2021.
Bitcoin’s creator owns 1 million bitcoins. It is estimated that Satoshi’s wallet contains nearly 5% of all bitcoins ever mined, but no transactions have ever been processed through the address of the wallet.
A Genesis Block is the name given to the first block a cryptocurrency, such as Bitcoin, ever mined. A blockchain consists of a series of so-called blocks that are used to store information related to transactions that occur on a blockchain network. Each of the blocks contains a unique header, and each such block is identified by its block header hash individually.
These blocks get layered—one on top of the other, with the Genesis Block being the foundation—and they grow in height until the end of the blockchain is reached and the sequence is complete. The layers and deep history of each sequence is one of the things that makes a blockchain-based cryptocurrency so secure.
Genesis Block, also referred as Block 0 or Block 1, still exists and will remain there as long as any computer runs the Bitcoin software.
Every node in the Bitcoin network can locate it, even though it now sits at the other end of a chain hundreds of thousands of blocks long. That’s the point of the blockchain.
Bitcoin Blocks have undergone several changes since its first trade 14 years ago. Today, it takes 10 minutes to mine Bitcoin and miners are rewarded for the same. However, the reward has since declined to 6.25 BTC. It will fall further in March, 2024, the next date for halving.
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