Bitcoin
It's from 2009, when you were 3.
- Maker
- Satoshi Nakamoto (pseudonymous)
- Type
- Cryptocurrency
- Debuted
- 2009
- Note
- First pizza buy: 10,000 BTC for two pies
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About
As of 2026, it's 17 years old.
Bitcoin launched in January 2009 from a nine-page whitepaper by Satoshi Nakamoto, a person (or people) who has never been identified and has not touched their fortune since. It promised money with no bank, no government, and no boss — just math and a shared ledger called the blockchain.
Its origin story includes the infamous 2010 transaction where a programmer bought two pizzas for 10,000 BTC, a meal that would later be worth hundreds of millions. May 22 is now celebrated as 'Bitcoin Pizza Day,' the most expensive lunch in human history.
Volatile, polarizing, and impossible to ignore, Bitcoin turned a cryptography mailing list idea into a trillion-dollar phenomenon that your uncle now has very strong opinions about.
Bitcoin through the years
Genesis block
Satoshi mines the first block, embedding a newspaper headline.
Pizza Day
10,000 BTC buys two pizzas — the first real-world purchase.
Legal tender
El Salvador becomes the first country to adopt it officially.
