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Happy New Year and happy 12th anniversary from Genesis Block! The Genesis block marks the beginning of the Bitcoin blockchain, and since Bitcoin SV (BSV) is the only blockchain that still maintains the original Bitcoin protocol, it is just BSV’s party to celebrate.
The Bitcoin Genesis Block is also known as Block # 0, and it was not “mined” in the way that later Bitcoin blocks were. Instead, it was built by creator Satoshi Nakamoto, also known as Dr. Craig S. Wright, as a benchmark and encoded in the protocol software, using an externally pre-calculated key value. Bitcoin Block # 1, mined six days later using the protocol’s proof-of-work algorithm after Satoshi released the software to the public, marks the true “beginning” of Bitcoin as we know it today. You can read more details and trivia about the history of the birth of Bitcoin here.
Satoshi’s Easter Egg
We can’t talk about the Bitcoin Genesis Block without mentioning the now famous Satoshi “Easter Egg” encoded in the original 50 Bitcoin coin base. It reads:
The Times 03 / Jan / 2009 Chancellor on the verge of a second bank rescue.
If only government bank bailouts were our biggest economic problem in 2021! Dr. Wright has said that he included this line as a real-world timestamp to mark the beginning of Bitcoin, and also as a call for accountability and transparency. Bitcoin was created on capitalist principles (sadly absent in today’s economy) with built-in incentives to reflect them. It is neither anti-bank nor anti-government, but it does exist on a global “truth ledger” that would make your decisions and actions more honest as they are recorded on the blockchain forever.
On the Genesis Block’s 10th anniversary, in 2019 and less than two months after Bitcoin BSV formally declared its independence, BSV mined a block of transactions 103 MB in size. This was the first block of Bitcoin to exceed 100MB, poking fun at those who claimed for years that the network could not scale.
Restoring the original Bitcoin protocol
Today there are still other blockchains that claim or use the “Bitcoin name”. The best known are BTC and BCH. However, none of those chains follow the rules of the original protocol and may even be illegally using Bitcoin’s 12-year transaction database. BSV is the only true version of Bitcoin that still exists today.
BTC officially separated itself from the Bitcoin blockchain when its developers introduced SegWit, or “segregated witness” that separated the digital signatures from the transaction block data. They also decided to keep transaction blocks limited to a size of 1 to 4 MB and move all but large payments to separate (still under development) networks off the blockchain.
These changes not only made BTC transactions unviably expensive, but also broke the ability to legally prove Bitcoin ownership and many transactions. That may have been intentional, or it may have stemmed from a misunderstanding of what Bitcoin was supposed to be. It was never intended for “anonymous” payments and it was never intended to be “digital gold”, traded but never moved. Bitcoin was designed to be used in millions of transactions a day and was designed to be auditable. Without these factors, Bitcoin has no place in the world.
BCH avoided SegWit and tiny blocks, but had its own plans to change the protocol. So in November 2018, those who wish to keep only the original rules said goodbye to them as well. Thus was born Bitcoin Satoshi Vision, Bitcoin SV or BSV. The BSV developers restored the Bitcoin protocol software as it was originally released in February 2020 with the public release of “Genesis”. Bitcoin today, like BSV, has no transaction block limits and can handle transactions for around 1/100 of a US penny. Its data processing capabilities are literally limitless, and the network could one day replace the Internet.
With that in mind, the proper Bitcoin birthday arrives, which happens six days from now. When marking these anniversaries, it is important to reflect on what Bitcoin is supposed to be for and why its original rules matter.
New to Bitcoin? Take a look at CoinGeek’s Bitcoin for beginners section, the ultimate resource guide for learning more about Bitcoin, as originally envisioned by Satoshi Nakamoto, and blockchain.
