The Genesis of Bitcoin
On October 31, 2008, a paper titled "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System" was published on a cryptography mailing list by Satoshi Nakamoto. Two months later, on January 3, 2009, the Bitcoin network came online with the mining of the Genesis Block (Block 0).
Bitcoin introduced a mathematical solution to digital scarcity. Prior to Bitcoin, digital files could be copied infinitely. Bitcoin made it possible to have a verifiably scarce digital asset with no central issuing authority.
Key Technical Properties of Bitcoin
- Hard Supply Cap: Exactly 21 million bitcoins will ever be minted. The rate of new issuance is governed strictly by software rules.
- Predictable Halving Schedule: Approximately every 210,000 blocks (roughly every 4 years), the block subsidy awarded to miners decreases by 50%.
- Decentralized Validation: Anyone with an ordinary personal computer and hard drive can run a Bitcoin full node and independently verify every transaction back to 2009.
Bitcoin Script: Programmable Conditions
Bitcoin is not just a ledger; it features a non-Turing-complete, stack-based scripting language known as Script. This language dictates the cryptographic requirements necessary to spend an unspent transaction output (UTXO), supporting multi-signature authorization, timelocks, and payment channels like the Lightning Network.
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