It's been exactly 13 years since computer scientist Hal Finney became the recipient of the first transaction on the Bitcoin blockchain from creator Satoshi Nakamoto.
On January 12, 2009, when the Bitcoin White Paper ( BTC ) was just three months old, Satoshi sent Finney 10 BTC - worth almost nothing at the time, but now about $440,000. That move, likely a test to determine the viability of the blockchain, was the first in a series of hundreds of millions of bitcoin transactions between millions of people around the world.
"When Satoshi announced the first software release, I immediately grabbed it," Finney said in a 2013 post on Bitcointalk.org. "I think I was the first person besides Satoshi to launch Bitcoin. I mined a 70-something block and was the recipient of the first bitcoin transaction when Satoshi sent me ten coins as a test. I had an email conversation with Satoshi over the next few days, mostly reporting bugs and him fixing them.
Finney was one of the first people to respond to Satoshi's post on the cypherpunks mailing list, and many still believed that he was one of the pseudonymous people behind the creation of bitcoin. Sadly, the legendary cryptocurrency pioneer died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis - ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease - in 2014. He would have been 65 years old in 2022 .
When the first BTC was sent, there wasn't even a monetary value tied to the crypto asset, whose blockchain had accumulated more than 701 million transactions as of Jan. 8. One of the most famous early use cases - exchanging 10,000 BTC for two pizzas in 2010. - helped pave the way for the cryptocurrency to eventually be accepted in many bars, restaurants, and even as legal tender throughout the country of El Salvador.
Thirteen years ago, Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies were highly experimental, untested and largely unknown. Today, regulators around the world are discussing how to handle the integration of central bank digital currencies, stablecoins and digital assets into their financial systems.
In 2035, thirteen years from now, blockchain BTC will likely still have many blocks to mine. Some experts predict that the price of crypto assets will reach $100,000 in 2022, with the potential to rise even higher in the coming years.
