January 9, 2009

Through a posting to The Cryptography Mailing List, the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto releases the first version of the Bitcoin software and launches the network of the decentralized peer-to-peer cryptocurrency. Six days earlier, Nakamoto had generated the first block of 50 bitcoins, now known as the Genesis Block.

Bitcoin has slowly but steadily gained momentum as its users appreciate the fact that no one entity can control, manipulate, or deactivate the digital currency, along with it being an extremely private form of payment. Bitcoin has the potential to become “the currency of the future,” which means it could completely change the way our society functions in regards to money, government, and the economy – which basically means it could change almost everything about the way the world works. Not bad for some open source code.