1,000 Decade-Old Dormant Bitcoins Moved Today on Bitcoin’s 12th Anniversary Bitcoin

12 years ago, Bitcoin’s inventor Satoshi Nakamoto launched the network after revealing the cryptocurrency concept via the white paper a few months prior. At approximately 18:15:05 UTC, the network launched its first block and since then, over 664,000 bitcoin blocks have been mined. Moreover, on the 12th anniversary of the network coming to life, a large string of 2010 block rewards started moving after more than ten years of sitting idle.

The 12th Anniversary of the Bitcoin Blockchain

Cryptocurrency proponents are celebrating the invocation of the first computational network to solve the Byzantine Fault dilemma created by the pseudonymous inventor Satoshi Nakamoto. The birth of the Bitcoin (BTC) network is quite special and over the last 12 years, the crypto asset has become extremely valuable reaching a high today on January 3, at $34,800 per unit.

After Satoshi shared his cryptocurrency concept to a few interested individuals online on Halloween 2008, a little more than three months later he launched the hardcoded block reward, otherwise known as ‘block zero’ or the ‘genesis block.’

Block zero or the genesis block has the usual 50 bitcoin reward, but these particular bitcoins can never be spent. The genesis block has two leading hex zeroes as well, which was a common characteristic for early blocks back then. Furthermore, the infamous block zero also contained a message that can be found in the block’s coinbase parameter.

This first blockchain message etched into Satoshi’s hardcoded bitcoin block says:

The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.

The genesis block today not only has the 50 bitcoin block reward that cannot be spent, but also people have sent small fractions of bitcoin to the address ever since it was launched. The genesis block address has seen approximately 2,722 transactions and there’s now a cumulative total of 68.35 BTC sitting idle.

These days, bitcoin blocks are quite predictable and are processed every 10 minutes or so by miners. But the block (1) that followed the hardcoded genesis block did not occur until seven days later. The first transaction with the software programmer, Hal Finney, took place in block 9 or three whole days after block 1 was mined.

Satoshi Nakamoto’s Well Deserved Bitcoin Stash

Now Satoshi Nakamoto also spent time with the community, all the way until December 2010. It is well known that the inventor also mined the crypto asset during those months he spent curating the network with the community.

Interestingly, it is assumed by various academic papers that Nakamoto had mined anywhere between 700,000 to 1.1 million BTC during his tenure kickstarting the network. The inventor did this allegedly with a single Windows-based personal computer. It is also assumed that Nakamoto has not spent any coins since they were initially mined, and his stash of a million bitcoin has sat idle…