Bitcoin celebrates its 8th birthday, and its price has exceeded 5,000 yuan

Today is the 8th birthday of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin. On November 1, 2008, Beijing time, a mysterious figure who called himself Satoshi Nakamoto officially released the Bitcoin white paper on the cryptography mailing list.

At the time, some people who read the paper for the first time became interested in the technology behind Bitcoin, but few seemed to anticipate that it would ever actually come to fruition.

When Bitcoin was officially launched in 2009, the most successful story in the field of digital currency slowly began. After Satoshi Nakamoto open-sourced Bitcoin, anyone could use it, update it, or even fork it. First, early Bitcoin adopters came from the crypto community, such as Hal Finney, who was the recipient of the first Bitcoin transaction.

In addition, cryptographers Nick Szabo and Wei Dai were also early adopters of Bitcoin. Szabo was developing the "bit gold" project before the release of the Bitcoin white paper, while Dai was the creator of b-money.

As Bitcoin gradually developed, more and more people began to accept this currency and tried everything related to it, from forking the code, to creating their own currency, or specializing in related mining technology.

You can read the full Bitcoin whitepaper here.

Bitcoin White Paper

[Abstract]: This paper proposes an electronic cash system that is completely implemented through peer-to-peer technology, which enables online payments to be initiated and paid directly from one party to another without going through any financial institution. Although digital signatures (Digital Signatures partially solve this problem, but if a third party is still needed to prevent double-spending, then the system is useless. We propose a solution that allows cash systems to operate in a peer-to-peer environment and prevent double-spending. The network timestamps all transactions by random hashing, merging them into an ever-extending chain of proof-of-work based on random hashing as a transaction record that cannot be changed unless the entire proof-of-work is re-completed. The longest chain serves not only as proof of the observed sequence of events, but also as proof that it came from the largest pool of CPU power. As long as the majority of CPU power does not intend to cooperate to attack the entire network, honest nodes will generate the longest chain that will outpace the attacker. The system itself requires very little infrastructure. Information is propagated throughout the network on a best-effort basis, and nodes can leave and rejoin the network at any time, with the longest proof-of-work chain serving as proof of transactions that occurred while the node was offline.

Bitcoin has come a long way in eight years

Bitcoin means different things to different people.

Some consider it a good store of value, and its market cap currently stands at $11.1 billion.

Others consider it a transaction system that enables people to buy and sell goods or services with minimal friction.

Or, others see the real value in bitcoin’s underlying technology and blockchain technology, and then apply them to other uses such as data storage and improved bank transfers.

There are also many people who believe that Bitcoin is not only a good store of value, but also a transaction system, and even more.

Bitcoin is censorship-resistant

In countries where the value of their currency is unstable, people use Bitcoin to transfer their money and protect their wealth.

Additionally, Bitcoin’s censorship-resistant nature allows those in vulnerable groups or under government oppression to have their voices heard.

Bitcoin has come a long way since Satoshi Nakamoto proposed the Bitcoin white paper and created the genesis block.

The Bitcoin processing network, made up of miners and mining pools, has become one of the most powerful networks in the world.

The number of full nodes in the Bitcoin network hovers between 5,000 and 6,000, with several different versions of node software distributed among them, and the main Bitcoin client, Bitcoin core, currently owns about 84% of the nodes.

And today, the price of Bitcoin has broken through the 5,000 yuan mark. Happy birthday, Bitcoin!