During the first week of January in 2009, the first Bitcoins were mined. Now, in January 2019, the crypto community is celebrating the 10th anniversary of this first block of Bitcoins. This first block of Bitcoins was called ‘Genesis Block.’

Bitcoin remains has remained the world’s largest cryptocurrency throughout this period, and is today, more well known than ever before.

The Journey Into the Impossible

Bitcoin didn’t operate in the same centralized systems we are used to seeing within governments and banking.

It presented a decentralized peer-to-peer payments system that was free from the control of any single authority.

Mati Greenspan, eToro’s senior market analyst, noted in a CNBC interview:

“Over the last ten years we’ve gone from this didn’t exist to now pretty much the entire world understands what it is, whether they agree with it or not.”

The Genesis Block of Bitcoin consisted of 50 coins and was mined on January 3, 2009.

Crypto mining involves solving complex mathematical puzzles that help in validating transactions and putting them into blocks.

Bitcoin works on the Proof-of-Work (POW) concept of cryptocurrency mining where miners compete to create the next block.

Bitcoin follows the guidelines laid out by its creator Satoshi Nakamoto in October 2008, making Bitcoin an alternate form of electronic cash.

The First Bitcoin Transaction and the Journey Since

The first Bitcoin transaction was completed on January 9, 2009, when Satoshi Nakamoto sent them to Hal Finney, a software developer.

However, the first real-world transaction for Bitcoin occurred in May 2010 when programmer Laszlo Hanyecz bought two pizzas from Papa John’s for a whopping 10,000 Bitcoin. This amount of Bitcoins could buy millions of pizzas today.

Bitcoin’s most infamous mainstream news included the fall of Mt. Gox, a Bitcoin exchange based in Tokyo that experienced several hacks.

Despite the setbacks, Bitcoin’s price continued to appreciate, moving past $1,000 in 2013.

Bitcoin reached all-time highs during the bull run from December 2017 to January 2018 when Bitcoin exceeded all expectations and reached $20,000.

Bitcoin’s is currently still in or just coming out of a bearish phase, trying to break above the $4,000 mark. It has some positive fundamentals going for it, like the Lightning Network protocol, and Bitcoin futures exchanges like Bakkt expected to go live soon. Will Bitcoin go back up again in 2019 and continue building on its decade of progress? That remains to be seen.