Hashcash proposes proof of work
Adam Back announced a scheme that required a sender to burn measurable computation before a message would be accepted.
THE HISTORY OF AN IDEA IN MOTION
History doesn’t move
in a straight line.
Follow the breakthroughs, arguments, crises, and unlikely moments that carried Bitcoin from a cryptography mailing list into world history.
Ride through Bitcoin history in 3D: a roller coaster shaped by its price, with an exhibit at every stop.
▶THE GRAND TOUR · 32 STOPSScroll to explore the eventsEXPLORE THE ARCHIVE
One chain. Hundreds
of turning points.
155 CURATED292 ALL EVENTS
VISIBLE CHAIN
Every event, in its place.
19971 event
19981 event
b-money describes a currency without a mint
Wei Dai circulated a proposal for money whose creation and ownership were tracked by every participant rather than an issuer.
20082 events
Satoshi contacts Wei Dai
Satoshi Nakamoto emailed Wei Dai about citing b-money in a forthcoming electronic-cash paper.
The Bitcoin white paper is announced
Satoshi Nakamoto announced “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” on the Cryptography Mailing List.
20096 events
The genesis block is mined
Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin’s first block and embedded a newspaper headline in its coinbase data.
Bitcoin v0.1 is released
Satoshi Nakamoto released the first public Bitcoin software and announced it on the Cryptography Mailing List.
The first person-to-person Bitcoin transaction
Satoshi Nakamoto sent 10 BTC to Hal Finney in Bitcoin’s first known transfer between two people.
Satoshi announces Bitcoin to the P2P Foundation
Nakamoto introduced the running software to a wider audience and stated the problem it was built to solve.
The first known bitcoin-for-fiat trade
Martti Malmi sold 5,050 BTC to New Liberty Standard for $5.02 sent through PayPal.
The Bitcoin forum opens
Satoshi Nakamoto launched a dedicated discussion board, later known as BitcoinTalk, for the growing project.
20107 events
Bitcoin Market opens
Bitcoin Market launched as the first publicly announced marketplace dedicated to trading bitcoin for conventional currency.
Laszlo Hanyecz offers 10,000 BTC for pizza
Programmer and miner Laszlo Hanyecz posted an offer to pay 10,000 BTC for two delivered pizzas.
10,000 BTC buys two pizzas
Jeremy Sturdivant arranged two pizzas for Laszlo Hanyecz in exchange for 10,000 BTC.
GPU mining begins to displace CPUs
The miner known as ArtForz began producing blocks with an OpenCL GPU setup during Bitcoin’s first mining-technology shift.
Mt. Gox launches as a bitcoin exchange
Jed McCaleb opened Mt. Gox for bitcoin trading after repurposing a domain originally created for game-card exchange.
The value-overflow incident creates 184 billion BTC
A validation bug allowed one transaction in block 74,638 to create outputs totaling more than 184 billion bitcoin.
Slush’s Pool mines its first block
Bitcoin Pooled Mining, later known as Slush Pool, found its first mainnet block using cooperative hash power.
20117 events
Bitcoin reaches U.S. dollar parity
One bitcoin traded for one U.S. dollar on Mt. Gox for the first time.
Mark Karpelès takes control of Mt. Gox
Jed McCaleb sold the Mt. Gox exchange to Mark Karpelès as trading activity expanded.
Satoshi sends a final known verified email
Satoshi Nakamoto sent Gavin Andresen a final known message emphasizing the project and its contributors rather than the founder.
Silk Road coverage links Bitcoin to a darknet market
A widely read Gawker article described Silk Road and its use of bitcoin for transactions.
WikiLeaks turns to bitcoin under a payment blockade
WikiLeaks began accepting bitcoin donations after card networks and PayPal cut off its funding.
Mt. Gox suffers a major security breach
A compromised account enabled fraudulent trades that briefly drove Mt. Gox’s displayed bitcoin price to one cent.
The BIP process gives Bitcoin a way to change
BIP 1 defined how proposals to alter Bitcoin would be written, discussed and recorded.
20126 events
Deterministic wallets replace the key pile
BIP 32 let an entire wallet's keys be derived from a single seed value.
Pay-to-script-hash activates
Bitcoin activated BIP 16, allowing payments to a script hash rather than exposing the full spending conditions in advance.
Coinbase is founded
A Y Combinator-backed startup set out to make buying bitcoin as simple as using a consumer web app.
Bitcoin Savings and Trust closes
Trendon Shavers announced the closure of Bitcoin Savings and Trust after promising unusually high bitcoin-denominated returns.
The Bitcoin Foundation is formed
Industry participants launched the Bitcoin Foundation to support development, advocacy, and adoption.
Bitcoin’s first halving
At block 210,000, Bitcoin’s block subsidy fell from 50 BTC to 25 BTC.
201311 events
The first mining ASICs ship
Avalon delivered the first purpose-built Bitcoin mining chips to customers.
An accidental chain split is resolved
A large block accepted by Bitcoin 0.8 nodes was rejected by many older nodes, splitting the network into two chains.
FinCEN issues virtual-currency guidance
The U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network distinguished ordinary users from administrators and exchangers under money-services rules.
A U.S. court treats bitcoin investments as securities
A federal judge held that bitcoin could be used as money and that Bitcoin Savings and Trust interests could fall under securities law.
Seed phrases turn a wallet into twelve words
BIP 39 encoded a wallet's master secret as an ordered list of common words.
Grayscale opens a bitcoin trust for institutions
A private placement began offering exposure to bitcoin through a conventional securities wrapper.
U.S. authorities seize Silk Road
Federal agents shut down the Silk Road marketplace and arrested alleged operator Ross Ulbricht.
The first public Bitcoin ATM goes live
A Robocoin kiosk opened at a Vancouver coffee shop, allowing customers to buy and sell bitcoin for cash.
The U.S. Senate holds landmark Bitcoin hearings
Senators, regulators, law-enforcement officials, and industry witnesses examined the risks and potential of virtual currencies.
China restricts financial institutions from Bitcoin business
Chinese authorities classified bitcoin as a virtual commodity and barred financial and payment institutions from providing Bitcoin-related services.
“I AM HODLING”
A forum user posted a misspelled, half-drunk defence of refusing to sell during a crash.
201410 events
Overstock.com begins accepting bitcoin
Overstock.com became the first major online retailer to accept bitcoin across its U.S. catalog.
Mt. Gox halts bitcoin withdrawals
Mt. Gox suspended bitcoin withdrawals while citing technical problems and transaction malleability.
Mt. Gox files for bankruptcy protection
Mt. Gox sought bankruptcy protection in Japan after reporting that approximately 850,000 BTC were missing.
Newsweek names Dorian Nakamoto as Satoshi
A cover story identified a 64-year-old engineer in Temple City, California, as Bitcoin's creator.
The IRS treats virtual currency as property
The U.S. Internal Revenue Service said convertible virtual currency would be treated as property for federal tax purposes.
GHash.io briefly exceeds half of observed hash rate
The GHash.io mining pool produced more than half of Bitcoin’s blocks over a short observation window.
New York proposes the BitLicense framework
The New York Department of Financial Services published proposed licensing rules tailored to virtual-currency businesses.
Hal Finney dies
The cryptographer who received the first bitcoin transaction died of ALS at 58.
Tether issues a dollar-denominated token
Realcoin, later renamed Tether, issued its first dollar-denominated tokens on Bitcoin through the Mastercoin protocol, now known as Omni Layer.
Blockstream is founded
A company formed to fund Bitcoin protocol engineering, employing several of its most active contributors.
20157 events
Coinbase launches a U.S. bitcoin exchange
Coinbase opened an order-book exchange for professional bitcoin trading in parts of the United States.
The Lightning Network paper proposes payments off-chain
Joseph Poon and Thaddeus Dryja described how to move bitcoin payments off the blockchain without trusting a custodian.
New York announces the final BitLicense rules
The New York Department of Financial Services issued its final regulatory framework for virtual-currency businesses.
BIP 66 activates and exposes false signaling
Bitcoin began enforcing strict DER signatures, after which miners building without full validation produced short invalid chains.
Bitcoin XT brings the block-size dispute into production software
Mike Hearn released Bitcoin XT with BIP 101 support for a miner-activated increase to Bitcoin’s block-size limit.
The CFTC classifies bitcoin as a commodity
In an enforcement order against Coinflip, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission held that bitcoin and other virtual currencies are commodities.
EU court exempts bitcoin exchange from VAT
The Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that exchanging bitcoin and traditional currencies is exempt from value-added tax.
20167 events
The Hong Kong agreement tries to settle the block-size fight
Developers and mining companies signed a statement pairing Segregated Witness with a later block-size increase.
Craig Wright publicly claims to be Satoshi
Australian computer scientist Craig Wright told several media organizations that he was Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto.
Japan passes a framework for virtual-currency exchanges
Japan’s Diet approved amendments recognizing virtual currency as an asset-like means of payment and regulating exchange operators.
Relative lock-time soft forks activate
Bitcoin activated BIPs 68, 112, and 113, enabling consensus-enforced relative timelocks and CHECKSEQUENCEVERIFY.
Bitcoin’s second halving
At block 420,000, Bitcoin’s block subsidy fell from 25 BTC to 12.5 BTC.
Bitfinex loses nearly 120,000 BTC
A security breach removed approximately 119,756 BTC from Bitfinex customer wallets and forced the exchange to halt operations.
Bitcoin Core v0.13.1 ships SegWit activation parameters
Bitcoin Core v0.13.1 included validation and miner-signaling support for the Segregated Witness soft fork.
201710 events
Binance launches
An exchange founded weeks before China's crackdown grew into the largest venue in the market.
BTC-e is taken offline as U.S. charges are unsealed
U.S. authorities charged BTC-e and alleged operator Alexander Vinnik after the exchange was disrupted by law enforcement.
A user-activated soft fork forces SegWit's hand
BIP 148 nodes began rejecting blocks that did not signal support for Segregated Witness.
Bitcoin Cash splits from Bitcoin
A group favoring larger on-chain blocks launched Bitcoin Cash through an incompatible fork of Bitcoin's transaction history.
Segregated Witness locks in
Miner signaling reached the threshold that locked in Segregated Witness for activation during the next difficulty period.
Segregated Witness activates on Bitcoin
SegWit activated at block 481824, introducing a new transaction format and effective block-weight system.
SegWit2x organizers cancel the planned hard fork
Backers of SegWit2x suspended its two-megabyte hard fork after concluding that the change lacked sufficient consensus.
Steam stops accepting bitcoin
Valve removed bitcoin payments, citing high fees and price volatility during the transaction window.
Bitcoin peaks near $20,000
The 2017 rally topped out just under $20,000 before losing more than four fifths of its value.
CME launches cash-settled Bitcoin futures
CME Group began trading a cash-settled Bitcoin futures contract based on its regulated reference rate.
20182 events
Lightning Labs releases the first lnd mainnet beta
Lightning Labs released lnd 0.4-beta with support for real-value channels on Bitcoin mainnet.
A bug that could have printed bitcoin is quietly patched
Bitcoin Core 0.16.3 fixed a flaw that allowed both a crash and, in some versions, the creation of coins from nothing.
20192 events
Binance reports a 7,000 BTC hot-wallet theft
Binance disclosed that attackers withdrew 7,000 BTC from one of its hot wallets in a coordinated security breach.
FATF applies global standards to virtual-asset providers
The Financial Action Task Force adopted guidance applying anti-money-laundering standards, including transfer information duties, to virtual-asset service providers.
20209 events
The Taproot proposals are published
BIPs 340, 341 and 342 set out Schnorr signatures, Taproot outputs and a new scripting version.
India's Supreme Court strikes down the crypto banking ban
The court held that the central bank's order cutting exchanges off from banking was disproportionate.
Bitcoin plunges during the global pandemic sell-off
Bitcoin fell roughly 40 percent intraday as global markets rushed toward cash during the early COVID-19 shock.
Bitcoin's third halving reduces the subsidy to 6.25 BTC
Block 630000 cut Bitcoin's per-block subsidy from 12.5 BTC to 6.25 BTC.
OCC confirms U.S. national banks may custody crypto assets
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said national banks and federal thrifts may provide cryptocurrency custody services.
MicroStrategy adopts Bitcoin as a treasury reserve asset
MicroStrategy announced a $250 million purchase of 21,454 BTC as part of a new capital-allocation strategy.
Square invests $50 million in Bitcoin
Payments company Square announced that it had purchased approximately 4,709 BTC for its corporate balance sheet.
PayPal announces cryptocurrency buying and merchant use
PayPal said U.S. customers would be able to buy, hold, and sell bitcoin and use supported crypto balances at checkout.
U.S. announces seizure of over 69,000 BTC linked to Silk Road
The Justice Department filed a civil forfeiture complaint after taking control of bitcoin allegedly connected to the Silk Road marketplace.
202115 events
Nigeria orders banks to close crypto accounts
The central bank directed financial institutions to identify and close accounts tied to cryptocurrency exchanges.
Tesla discloses a $1.5 billion Bitcoin purchase
Tesla's annual filing disclosed that the company had invested $1.5 billion in bitcoin under a revised treasury policy.
Purpose Bitcoin ETF begins trading in Canada
Purpose Investments launched a physically backed Bitcoin ETF on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
Coinbase lists publicly on Nasdaq
Coinbase shares began trading through a direct listing on Nasdaq under the ticker COIN.
China's State Council committee calls for a Bitcoin mining crackdown
A State Council financial committee called for cracking down on Bitcoin mining and trading activities.
El Salvador's president announces a Bitcoin legal-tender bill
President Nayib Bukele announced that he would send legislation making Bitcoin legal tender to El Salvador's assembly.
The FBI recovers a ransomware payment in bitcoin
U.S. authorities seized about 63.7 BTC of the ransom Colonial Pipeline had paid to the DarkSide group.
El Salvador passes the Bitcoin Law
El Salvador's Legislative Assembly approved a law giving Bitcoin legal-tender status alongside the U.S. dollar.
Taproot locks in through Speedy Trial
Miner signaling met the Speedy Trial threshold, locking Taproot in for activation at block 709632.
Difficulty falls by a record 28%
Bitcoin's largest ever downward difficulty adjustment followed China's removal of roughly half the network's hash rate.
El Salvador's Bitcoin Law takes effect
Bitcoin's legal-tender status began in El Salvador as the government launched the Chivo wallet and related infrastructure.
China declares virtual-currency business activities illegal
Chinese authorities issued a coordinated notice treating a broad range of virtual-currency trading services as illegal financial activity.
The first U.S. bitcoin ETF begins trading
ProShares listed a fund holding bitcoin futures rather than bitcoin itself.
Bitcoin reaches its 2021 cycle high
Bitcoin traded near $69,000 on major dollar markets before beginning a prolonged decline.
Taproot activates on Bitcoin
Taproot activated at block 709632, adding Schnorr signatures, new spending rules, and more flexible scripts.
20228 events
Canada freezes protest-linked accounts under emergency powers
Invoking the Emergencies Act, the government directed banks to freeze accounts tied to the trucker convoy, and named crypto addresses.
Ukraine publishes addresses for cryptocurrency donations
Ukraine's government shared bitcoin and other cryptocurrency addresses for donations after Russia's full-scale invasion.
United States issues a government-wide digital-assets order
President Joe Biden signed an executive order directing coordinated federal work on digital-asset risks and opportunities.
Central African Republic adopts Bitcoin as legal tender
The Central African Republic announced legislation making Bitcoin legal tender alongside the CFA franc.
Terra's stablecoin system enters a collapse
TerraUSD lost its intended dollar peg and the associated LUNA token entered a hyperinflationary collapse.
EU institutions reach political agreement on MiCA
European negotiators reached a provisional agreement on the Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation.
OFAC sanctions a privacy tool rather than a person
The U.S. Treasury added the Tornado Cash mixing contracts to its sanctions list.
FTX files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy
FTX Trading and more than one hundred affiliates entered U.S. bankruptcy proceedings after a rapid liquidity crisis.
20238 events
Ordinals brings inscriptions to Bitcoin
Casey Rodarmor released the Ordinals protocol and tooling for tracking individual satoshis and attaching inscriptions to them.
Central African Republic removes Bitcoin's legal-tender status
A revised cryptocurrency law removed legal-tender status and guaranteed convertibility for crypto assets in the Central African Republic.
Council of the EU formally adopts MiCA
The Council completed the legislative adoption of the Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation.
The SEC sues Binance and Coinbase in consecutive days
The agency filed suit against the largest offshore exchange and the largest U.S. one within twenty-four hours.
BlackRock files for a U.S. spot Bitcoin product
Nasdaq filed to list BlackRock's proposed iShares Bitcoin Trust as a commodity-based trust holding bitcoin.
Grayscale wins its appeal against the SEC
The D.C. Circuit vacated the SEC's denial of Grayscale's proposal to convert GBTC into a spot Bitcoin ETP.
Binance and its founder enter U.S. guilty pleas
Binance agreed to more than $4 billion in U.S. resolutions and founder Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty to an anti-money-laundering charge.
FASB adopts fair-value accounting for covered crypto assets
The Financial Accounting Standards Board required qualifying crypto assets such as bitcoin to be measured at fair value each reporting period.
202410 events
SEC approves U.S. spot Bitcoin ETP listings
The SEC approved exchange rule changes allowing multiple spot Bitcoin exchange-traded products to list in the United States.
U.S. spot Bitcoin ETPs begin trading
New spot Bitcoin products began trading on Nasdaq, NYSE Arca, and Cboe alongside Grayscale's converted trust.
U.K. judge rules that Craig Wright is not Satoshi
At the close of trial, the High Court declared that Craig Wright did not create Bitcoin, write its white paper, or use the Satoshi Nakamoto identity.
Bitcoin's fourth halving reduces the subsidy to 3.125 BTC
Block 840000 cut the block subsidy from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC.
Samourai Wallet's founders are arrested
U.S. prosecutors charged the developers of a bitcoin privacy wallet with money laundering and unlicensed money transmission.
Mt. Gox begins Bitcoin repayments
The Mt. Gox rehabilitation trustee made the first bitcoin and bitcoin cash repayments through designated exchanges.
Donald Trump proposes retaining U.S.-held Bitcoin
At a Bitcoin conference in Nashville, presidential candidate Donald Trump pledged that a future administration would retain federal bitcoin holdings.
Bitcoin trades above $100,000
Bitcoin crossed the $100,000 level on major dollar markets for the first time.
El Salvador and IMF agree on Bitcoin-policy changes
An IMF staff-level financing agreement called for voluntary private Bitcoin acceptance and reduced public-sector participation.
MiCA becomes fully applicable across the EU
The main provisions of the EU Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation began applying after its staged implementation period.
202520 events
Ross Ulbricht is pardoned
President Trump granted a full pardon to the Silk Road founder, who had served more than eleven years of a life sentence.
SEC staff rescinds SAB 121
Staff Accounting Bulletin 122 removed the SEC staff guidance that had required certain crypto custodians to record safeguarding assets and liabilities at gross fair value.
United States changes executive-branch digital-asset policy
President Donald Trump signed an order promoting lawful public-blockchain use and creating a presidential working group on digital-asset markets.
El Salvador makes private Bitcoin acceptance voluntary
El Salvador's assembly amended the Bitcoin Law to remove mandatory private acceptance and limit public-sector involvement.
Bybit loses about $1.5 billion in the largest crypto theft on record
Attackers redirected a routine cold-to-hot wallet transfer, taking the largest single haul in the industry's history.
United States establishes a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve
President Donald Trump ordered the creation of a reserve capitalized with federally held bitcoin that had been finally forfeited.
Network hashrate passes one zettahash
Bitcoin's estimated hashrate crossed 10^21 hashes per second for the first time.
Twenty One Capital launches with 42,000 BTC
Tether, Bitfinex and SoftBank backed a new bitcoin-treasury company set to go public through a Cantor Fitzgerald SPAC.
New Hampshire authorizes limited public-fund Bitcoin investment
Governor Kelly Ayotte signed HB 302, allowing the state treasurer to invest up to five percent of specified funds in qualifying digital assets and precious metals.
Pakistan announces a strategic bitcoin reserve
The prime minister's special assistant on blockchain and crypto unveiled a government-backed bitcoin reserve at the Bitcoin 2025 conference.
Texas establishes a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve
Texas SB 21 took effect after the governor signed legislation creating a special reserve outside the state treasury.
The CLARITY Act passes the U.S. House
A market-structure bill dividing oversight between the SEC and CFTC passed 294 to 134 with bipartisan support.
United States enacts the GENIUS Act
The GENIUS Act became federal law, creating a regulatory framework for permitted payment stablecoin issuers.
Roman Storm is convicted on one count
A New York jury found the Tornado Cash co-founder guilty of conspiring to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business and deadlocked on money-laundering and sanctions charges.
An executive order opens 401(k) plans to crypto
President Trump directed the Labor Department and the SEC to ease the way for digital assets and other alternatives in workplace retirement plans.
Bitcoin reaches its all-time high near $126,000
The price peaked at roughly $126,000, the highest level Bitcoin has traded at.
Bitcoin Core v30 relaxes the OP_RETURN limit
The release raised the default size of data a node will relay in an OP_RETURN output, splitting the developer community.
The largest liquidation event in crypto history
More than $19 billion of leveraged positions were forcibly closed in twenty-four hours after a tariff announcement.
Changpeng Zhao is pardoned
The Binance founder received a full pardon, erasing the conviction that followed his 2023 guilty plea.
The Czech National Bank buys bitcoin
The central bank set up a $1 million test portfolio holding bitcoin, a dollar stablecoin and a tokenized deposit.
20266 events
Bitcoin's worst start to a year on record
The price fell below $61,000, more than 50% down from October's high, in the weakest opening fifty days Bitcoin has had.
BIP 360 proposes a quantum-resistant output type
A proposal for a new output type that avoids exposing public keys was merged into the BIP repository as a draft.
Bitcoin's mined supply passes 20 million BTC
Bitcoin's cumulative issued supply crossed 20 million BTC at block 940,000.
Strategy's premium disappears and it starts selling
The largest corporate holder traded below the value of its own bitcoin and began disposing of coins.
Weak seeds drain Coldcard hardware wallets
An attacker swept about 1,816 BTC from more than 5,200 addresses whose seeds had been generated with predictable randomness.
The CLARITY Act stalls on the Senate floor
A motion to begin debate on the market-structure bill failed 49 to 50, short of the 60 votes cloture requires.
HOW WE KNOW
History, with receipts.
Every record includes a direct source wherever one survives: blocks and transactions, BIPs and release notes, court records and enacted laws.
Claims are labelled when dates are estimated or interpretations are disputed. Exchange failures are never described as protocol failures.
The archive is editorially reviewed, versioned, and designed to accept corrections without silently rewriting the past.