Bitcoin’s Genesis Block: The 5-Day Mystery That Shaped a $2 Trillion Asset

Key Takeaways

• Bitcoin’s Genesis Block was mined on this day 16 years ago.
• Satoshi Nakamoto mined the Genesis block and received a 50 BTC reward, but the first 50 BTC remains untraceable.
• The Genesis block also contained a hard-coded message, puzzling many.

On this day, 16 years ago, the pseudo-anonymous creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto , mined the genesis block, aka the first block of the Bitcoin blockchain.

This started the journey of an asset class that went from literal zero price to its current $2 trillion market capitalization .

In 2009, Bitcoin’s anonymous developer, Satoshi Nakamoto, mined the Genesis Bitcoin block.  While the Genesis block in any blockchain marks the beginning, the Bitcoin Genesis block was filled with mysteries and secret messages.

The 5-Day Gap Between Genesis Block and Block 1

The Bitcoin blockchain was coded to produce a new block every 10 minutes, which contains transaction information.

However, after Satoshi mined the first block on Jan. 3, 20009, the next block was produced after 5 days, 720 times more than the coded time.

There are several theories and logic behind it, with the most prominent one suggesting that Satoshi Nakamoto intended for more people to find the Genesis block, download the client, and set everything up.

An online forum discussing the time gap noted that the original software was designed not to start mining until it had found another peer on the network. 

This theory suggests that the first version of the Bitcoin node, Bitcoin 0.1, was only announced on the mailing list on January 8th. The second node would only appear on the network once someone else’s interest was piqued enough to download and run the software.

Block 1 is timestamped 2009-01-09 2:54 UTC, 7 hours and 27 minutes after the email announcement.

The First 50 BTC Block Reward is Untraceable

Another mystery surrounding the Genesis block is that the first 50 BTC mining reward is untraceable.

The Bitcoin blockchain cannot find the first transaction of 50 BTC in its database. This means that the Genesis Block transaction is not considered a real transaction.

Although a webpage coded into the Genesis block points towards the 50 BTC transaction, when clicked, it shows an error message.

Was it Nakamoto’s intention for the original Bitcoin to be untradable? Or did the pseudonymous creator make a coding error? Most people think it could not have been an error, given that the network has been running since the Genesis block was mined.

The Hard-Coded Genesis Message

Apart from the 5-day gap and the untraceable first 50 BTC , the hard-coded message is another mysterious aspect of the Genesis block.

Nakamoto inserted a statement into the Genesis Block’s raw data: “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on the brink of the second bailout for banks.”

The secret message refers to a 2009 headline in The [London] Times about the British government’s failure to stimulate the economy following the 2007–08 financial crisis. 

Many believe the hard-coded statement is a message from Nakamoto highlighting how government-run financial systems crumble under real financial pressure despite many institutions being too big to fail.