Looking back at what major events happened to Bitcoin in January in history?

Later this year, Bitcoin will celebrate its 14th birthday. In the past 14 years, Bitcoin has made great progress, with its market value exceeding $1 trillion in 2021.

January has always been important for Bitcoin since its inception as the month hosts several historical events and milestones for Bitcoin.

2009: The Dawn of Bitcoin

On January 3, 2009, a few months after the release of the Bitcoin white paper, Satoshi Nakamoto mined the Bitcoin Genesis Block and signed it with the words: "The Times January 3, 2009, Chancellor on the verge of a second bailout for banks", highlighting some of the financial turmoil that inspired him to invent Bitcoin and officially launching the Bitcoin network.

Just six days later, on January 9, the first Bitcoin (0.1) client was released, enabling users to perform Bitcoin transactions and paving the way for the first Bitcoin transaction on January 12, when Satoshi Nakamoto sent 10 BTC to Hal Finney (block 170).

2010: First real Bitcoin purchase?

Almost everyone knows the story of Laszlo Hanyecz, who bought two pizzas for 10,000 BTC in May 2010, which is largely considered the first "real world" purchase made with Bitcoin. However, on January 24, 2010, BitcoinTalk forum user Sabunir posted a thread on the forum titled "Newbie's test - Anyone want to buy a picture for $1?" He was asking if anyone wanted to buy a 1280x960 resolution desktop wallpaper for $1 Bitcoin and left his wallet address.

Just one month later, two batches of newly mined 50 BTC were sent to his address, which is likely how someone “purchased” his wallpaper. If this purchase did take place, it would have been the true first “real world” purchase using Bitcoin and another milestone for the digital currency as we know it today.

2011: Bitcoin for Nonprofits

On January 20, 2011, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) made history by becoming the first nonprofit to accept Bitcoin donations, paving the way for many such organizations in the future. By June 2010, they stopped accepting donations before Wikileaks began accepting Bitcoin donations, but they resumed accepting Bitcoin again by May 2013.

Another historic event took place in January 2011 when three people used an OTC service to buy 4 BTC each for 100,000,000,000,000 ZWD (100 trillion ZWD). To this day, it remains the largest value ever traded in Bitcoin.

2012: Bitcoin appears on TV

By 2012, Bitcoin began to make waves around the world and was featured in the 13th episode of the 3rd season of the American TV series The Good Wife, titled "Bitcoin for Dummies," which focused on a lawyer defending himself for not revealing the identity of his client, who allegedly created Bitcoin. The episode aired on January 15th and recorded a single Bitcoin price of just $6.90 when 9.45 million American viewers watched. This was the first time Bitcoin appeared in mainstream media outside of news broadcasts.

2013: Startups emerge

Nearly five years after Bitcoin was launched, investors are starting to take notice of Bitcoin-related startups. On January 7, BitPay, a Bitcoin payment service provider founded in 2011, became the first Bitcoin-related startup to raise venture capital funding with a $510,000 funding round. It raised an additional $2 million later that year.

2014: Gaming and Casinos

By January 2014, things were starting to heat up as more companies began accepting bitcoin payments. Zynga, the developer behind popular mobile games like FarmVille, announced plans on January 4 to allow users to use bitcoin for in-game purchases, with the company using BitPay’s infrastructure to test payments.

Later that month, on January 21, two Las Vegas casinos and their hotels announced plans to begin accepting Bitcoin in parts of their operations. The Las Vegas Casino and the Golden Gate Casino became the first casinos to begin accepting Bitcoin, long before Bitcoin became the global digital currency it is today.

Interestingly, a physical copy of the February 2014 Bitcoin Magazine, written in January 2014, is on display at the National Museum of American History.

2015: Rise and fall

Bitcoin had a very turbulent start to 2015, with January 2015 seeing one of its largest monthly declines at the time, down 30.9%. However, not everything was so bad, in fact, Coinbase’s $75 million Series C funding round in January was considered the largest funding round for a Bitcoin-related company at the time, and the Coinbase exchange was launched later that month.

At the time, Coinbase was focused on Bitcoin and helped companies like Overstock, Dell, Expedia, Dish Network, etc. accept Bitcoin payments. It also worked with payment providers Stripe, Braintree, and PayPal to process Bitcoin payments.

2016: Crazy forking

In January 2016, Bitcoin Classic joined the “fork camp” and was the first of many failed Bitcoin forks to be favored by many Bitcoin businesses, developers, investors, and miners. Although it did not last long, it inspired many other Bitcoin forks - most of which were just for quick cash.

Interestingly, the Bitcoin network hash rate will also exceed 1 exahash per second for the first time in January 2016.

2017: Overly bullish

2017 was a year of excessive bullishness, with Bitcoin surpassing $1,000 again in January after nearly three years of growth; it even rose to just below $20,000 before a sharp decline at the end of 2017.

2018: Government boycott

One of the biggest waves of government resistance against Bitcoin came in January 2018, following a massive price rally at the end of 2017. That month, governments and central banks in China, Bahrain, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ecuador, Egypt, Ghana, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Kyrgyzstan, Kosovo, Mozambique, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Slovenia, South Korea, and Tajikistan strongly opposed Bitcoin as a currency. More countries followed in the following months.

That same month, Facebook banned all cryptocurrency-related ads on its platform. Interestingly, it wasn’t all doom and gloom at the time, as Samsung partnered with a Chinese company to start making chips and semiconductors for Bitcoin miners, Swiss authorities began accepting Bitcoin payments, and the Peter Thiel Foundation purchased Bitcoin.

2019 to Present

Bitcoin has barely been out of the public eye since its sharp price drop in early 2018. Instead, cautious investors slowly began to accumulate, and the price of Bitcoin hovered for most of 2018 and 2019. Bitcoin began to rise sharply in the second half of 2019, ahead of the halving in May 2020.

While no major events occurred in January during this period, Bitcoin did surpass $40,000 for the first time in January 2021, reaching a historic $1 trillion market cap shortly thereafter. Moreover, January 2022 was not without historic events: On January 2, the Bitcoin hash rate exceeded 203.5 exahashes per second for the first time, an increase of more than 200 times in the past six years.

Many milestones have occurred in January throughout Bitcoin’s history, and one could even call January the true birth month of Bitcoin if one considers that the Bitcoin network went live when Satoshi Nakamoto mined the genesis block in January 2009. However, by looking back at the milestones, growth, and building of a global and enduring community over the years, January is a month that everyone in the Bitcoin community should celebrate.