Bitcoin is the first cryptocurrency ever to be invented and it introduced the blockchain technology. It gave birth to a whole new area and this is the very reason why there are so many events in its past that are considered to be memorable or important.

Let’s dive into the most important days and events in Bitcoin’s history and see why they are of significance.

October 31, 2008: The whitepaper release-date

Some members of the community argue that Bitcoin was born on a different day. They commemorate October 31, 2008. On that day the Bitcoin whitepaper was released by Satoshi Nakamoto. While the Bitcoin network started months later, he indeed ironed out his whole idea in this paper.

Therefore, October 31 is also a day that is celebrated or commemorated among Bitcoiner worldwide. Usually, they invite each other read the paper and go into detail about Bitcoin’s specifications.

January 3, 2009: The Genesis Block

Bitcoin’s core technology is the blockchain. And as the term suggests it is a chain of blocks that are cryptographically tied together. The very first block in this chain marks the birth of Bitcoin. It is commonly called the Genesis Block and was created on January 3, 2009. It also contains an important message that Satoshi Nakamoto embedded himself:

"The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks."

The iteration starts with block 0 and block 1 was mined 6 days later. This is peculiar since Bitcoin is producing a new block every 10 minutes on average. Many believe that Satoshi experimented during that time before he continued mining. In any case, January 3 should be on your watchlist because Bitcoiners celebrate Bitcoin’s birthday.

January 12, 2009: The first Bitcoin transaction

On January 12, 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto sent the first Bitcoin transaction in history to Hal Finney. Finney joined the Bitcoin network one day prior sending a legendary tweet:

“Running Bitcoin”

Finney was a programmer who became a strong supporter of Bitcoin and became a legend. It was often speculated that he was Satoshi Nakamoto. Unfortunately, Finney was terminally ill and passed away in 2014. Bitcoiners use to celebrate this day and Hal Finney who contributed to Bitcoin continuously only stopped by his severe condition. 

May 22, 2010: Bitcoin Pizza Day

On May 22, 2010 programmer Laszlo Hanyecz ordered two pizzas via Bitcointalk. The day is celebrated among Bitcoiners as the first transaction in Bitcoin which exchanged goods and services for BTC. There are some doubts that this is indeed the first one, but at the end of the day, it is the first one that was ever to be publicly recorded.

Bitcoin Pizza Day is commemorated every year and widely recognized by the broader media because Hanyecz spent about $690 million on two pizzas when taking Bitcoin’s all-time high into account.

February 9, 2011: First-time Dollar parity

The first Bitcoin exchange opened its doors in 2010. One year later, on February 9^th, 2011, Bitcoin reached Dollar parity for the first time in its history. Many people believed that this was already the top. Little did they know what was going to come in the future. While the day is not celebrated by the community, it is still a remarkable milestone in Bitcoin’s history.

March 15, 2018: The Lightning Network started

The Lightning network started on March 15, 2018. This day is also very significant since the Lightning Network is Bitcoin’s most important attempt to serve as a scaling solution. At that point in time, Lightning was still a bit clunky because it requires to send invoices to receive payments. Over time more options were added and today it is less of a problem to send and receive BTC with almost instant confirmation of the transaction.