The history of bitcoin starts on October 31, 2008, when a nine-page paper describing the idea was shared with a cryptography mailing list. The network itself began on January 3, 2009, with the genesis block, and it has run without a break ever since, adding a block roughly every ten minutes.
This bitcoin timeline goes year by year, with exact dates and block numbers you can check on a block explorer. It sticks to events, not prices, and nothing here is financial advice. Where one of our guides or tees covers a milestone, we link it.
Before bitcoin
Bitcoin did not appear from nowhere. In 1993 Eric Hughes wrote a manifesto arguing that privacy should be built with code, which you can read about in our cypherpunk manifesto guide. In 1997 Adam Back published Hashcash, a scheme that made senders spend computing effort to prove they were not spamming. Hashcash is cited in the white paper, and its idea of costly guesses lives on in proof of work.
2008: the idea goes public
- August 18, 2008. The bitcoin.org domain is registered, according to the Bitcoin Wiki's timeline.
- October 31, 2008. A message signed Satoshi Nakamoto shares the white paper, titled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. Our plain-English white paper summary walks through it, and the White Paper tee prints its subtitle and date.
2009: the network starts
- January 3, 2009. The genesis block, block 0, is mined with a newspaper headline inside. See the genesis block guide or the Genesis Block tee.
- January 9, 2009. Version 0.1 of the software is announced and block 1 follows.
- January 10, 2009. Early user Hal Finney posts two words, "Running bitcoin." The story is in our Hal Finney guide, and the Running Bitcoin tee is an independent tribute to it.
- January 12, 2009. Block 170 records 10 BTC sent from Satoshi to Finney, widely seen as the first payment between two people.
2010: first purchase, first exchange
- May 22, 2010. Programmer Laszlo Hanyecz pays 10,000 BTC for two pizzas, the first widely known purchase of physical goods. Bitcoin Pizza Day marks it every year, and the Pizza Day tee prints the date.
- July 2010. A Slashdot post on July 11 brings a wave of new users, and Mt. Gox, which became the early market's biggest exchange, is established on July 17.
- December 12, 2010. Satoshi's last public forum post is dated this day, and later private emails ended in April 2011. We tell that story in who is Satoshi Nakamoto.
2012: the first halving
- November 28, 2012. At block 210,000 the block reward is cut from 50 BTC to 25 BTC. It is the first of the scheduled halvings, covered in full in when is the next bitcoin halving.
2014: the Mt. Gox collapse
- February 28, 2014. After freezing withdrawals earlier that month, Mt. Gox files for bankruptcy protection in Tokyo. The episode pushed many people toward holding their own keys, a lesson our not your keys, not your coins guide goes through.
2016 to 2018: more capacity, a second layer
- July 9, 2016. The second halving, at block 420,000, takes the reward from 25 BTC to 12.5 BTC.
- August 24, 2017. Segregated Witness, better known as SegWit, activates at block 481,824. It fixed a bug called transaction malleability and introduced the weight system that measures block capacity today. It followed years of heated debate about how bitcoin should scale.
- January and March 2018. Early users begin sending real payments over the Lightning Network in January, and Lightning Labs releases its first mainnet beta on March 15. Lightning is the fast layer behind zaps, explained in our zaps guide.
2020 to 2021: a third halving and new upgrades
- May 11, 2020. The third halving, at block 630,000, cuts the reward to 6.25 BTC.
- September 7, 2021. El Salvador's Bitcoin Law takes effect, the first time a country made bitcoin legal tender. The dollar stayed the country's official currency, and in January 2025 it was amended so that businesses are no longer required to accept bitcoin.
- November 14, 2021. Taproot activates at block 709,632. It brought Schnorr signatures and more flexible scripts, which can improve privacy and trim the size of certain transactions.
SegWit and Taproot were both soft forks, meaning they tightened the rules in a way that old software still accepts. That is why bitcoin can upgrade without splitting into two networks, which is also why changes tend to be slow and cautious.
2024 to 2025: ETFs, a fourth halving and a reserve
- January 10 to 11, 2024. The US Securities and Exchange Commission approves the first spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds, and trading begins the next day. The agency said it was approving the listing of the products, not endorsing bitcoin.
- April 20, 2024. The fourth halving, at block 840,000, reduces the reward to 3.125 BTC. The same day saw a surge of fee activity from a new token protocol, as we describe in bitcoin transaction fees explained.
- March 6, 2025. A US executive order (number 14233) establishes a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve to hold bitcoin the federal government has forfeited.
2026 and what comes next
By early October 2026 the chain has passed block 970,000, and network hash rate is hovering just under one zettahash per second (see our difficulty adjustment guide). The next halving is expected around April 2028, at block 1,050,000, and the Halving 2028 tee marks it ahead of time. We will add milestones to this page as they are confirmed.
Wearing the timeline
Our bitcoin history shirts page gathers the five tees that match milestones above, from the paper to the halving. If you only want one, the White Paper tee is the quietest and the Genesis Block tee is the most likely to start a conversation. The wider bitcoin t-shirts collection has the rest.
Sources: Bitcoin Wiki, History, Lightning Labs on the lnd beta and The Block on the 2024 ETF approvals. Block numbers and timestamps can be checked on any block explorer.
