14 years since the first Bitcoin transaction: Peer-to-peer electronic cash lives on

On January 12, 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto sent renowned cryptographer Hal Finney the first Bitcoin transaction.

It consisted of 10 bitcoins and is forever recorded on the blockchain. Apart from Satoshi, Finney was the first to run the Bitcoin software and tweeted about it the day before he received the first coins.

Running bitcoin

— halfin (@halfin) January 11, 2009

Finney contributed to Bitcoin, but he was not Satoshi Nakamoto

There’s no doubt that Hal Finney contributed massively to the development of Bitcoin in the early days. In his own words, he carried on a lengthy email correspondence with Satoshi, working out bugs and fixing them as he went.

“I mined block 70-something, and I was the recipient of the first bitcoin transaction when Satoshi sent ten coins to me as a test — I carried on an email conversation with Satoshi over the next few days, mostly me reporting bugs and him fixing them.”

However, despite popular opinion, Finney was not Bitcoin’s inventor. When you think about it, it makes little sense for him to have emailed himself, talking about bugs and fixing them, in Bitcoin’s early days.

While Finney is a fan favorite, and many people still believe he is the man behind the Satoshi pseudonym, that’s just not true.

Is Hal Finney the man behind bitcoin?

No. No, he isn't, but he was a VERY cool dude, and it was a lot of fun re-reading all of his posts and his emails again over the last month or so while writing.

Please read and SHARE. https://t.co/e7Pkg3dBtc#runningbitcoin #bitcoin

— Kurt Wuckert Jr | GorillaPool.com (@kurtwuckertjr) January 10, 2023

Nonetheless, Finney deserves credit for his contributions to Bitcoin. The developer of the PGP encryption system played a pivotal role in making Bitcoin work and will forever be remembered as the first person to receive a transaction.

The original Bitcoin has been restored

When Finney received the 10 bitcoins from Satoshi, Bitcoin was in its original state. Despite a few bugs, it was a peer-to-peer electronic cash system that functioned with almost zero fees.

The nature of Bitcoin is such that once version 0.1 was released, the core design was set in stone for the rest of its lifetime. – Satoshi Nakamoto

Since those days, BTC Core developers and other vested interests, such as Barry Silbert’s Digital Currency Group, have attempted to hijack and suppress Bitcoin, keeping its scalability and data management potential under wraps.

However, 14 years on, the original Bitcoin has been restored; the low-fee, infinitely scalable electronic cash system outlined by Satoshi Nakamoto is back. These days, it’s known by its ticker symbol BSV which scales to millions and eventually billions of transactions per second.

This time, Bitcoin won’t be used for criminal purposes as it was the first time around. Using the legal system, a process is being developed to recover stolen digital assets, and with Bitcoin’s innate traceability, the world will soon understand that it’s the worst possible thing to use for crime.

The Bitcoin network is growing

January 12, 2009, will forever be remembered as the day the first Bitcoin transaction occurred. However, a few years from now, on the same date, it’s likely that billions of such transactions will occur. These are being powered by an ever-growing number of apps utilizing Bitcoin micropayments.

The original Bitcoin is back, and despite the best efforts of its enemies, it can not and will not be stopped this time!

Watch: Bitcoin transactions at scale are cheaper