The Blockchain Rollercoaster

A Chronology

31 October 2008 – The Bitcoin white paper authored by a cryptographer with the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto is published on "The Cryptography Mailing List".

 

3 January 2009 – The first bitcoin block is mined by Satoshi Nakamoto. Embedded in the coinbase of this block is the text: "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks."

 

22 May 2010 – Two pizzas are bought for 10,000 BTC, making it the first exchange of bitcoin for a consumer product. Nowadays celebrated as the "Bitcoin Pizza Day".

 

July 2010 – The bitcoin exchange and price quoting service Mt. Gox (originally meaning "Magic: The Gathering Online eXchange") launches.

 

February 2011 – Silk Road, the first modern Darknet market for selling drugs is launched. All payments are made in Bitcoin.

 

June 2011 – WikiLeaks begins accepting Bitcoin for donations.

 

October 2013 – The FBI shuts down the Silk Road website and arrests the site's pseudonymous founder "Dread Pirate Roberts".

 

December 2013 – Vitalik Buterin publishes the Ethereum white paper.

 

February to March 2014 – The biggest bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox halts all withdrawals and shuts down subsequently, kicking of the first prolonged cryptocurrency bear market. The Bitcoin price falls from ~$1,242 (Nov 2013) to ~$200 (Mar 2015).

 

September 2014 – The second generation blockchain network Ethereum raises ~$18 million in Bitcoin via an initial coin offering making it the highest funded crowdfunding campaign in history.

 

30 July 2015 – Ethereum launches with 72 million preallocated coins.

 

28 May 2016 – The DAO becomes the new largest crowdfunding campaign in history, raising the equivalent of ~$120 million in Ether (the name of Ethereum’s coin).

 

June 2016 – The DAO smart contract is drained for ~$50 million in Ether by an attacker. In the aftermath the network splits into Ethereum (ETH) and Ethereum Classic (ETC).

 

1 August 2017 – Bitcoin splits into two derivative digital currencies, Bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) over a debate about the megabyte size of blocks.

 

17 December 2017 – The Bitcoin price peaks at ~$20.000.

 

13 January 2018 – The Ethereum price peaks at ~$1.400.

 

3 May 2018 – Vitalik Buterin does the badger dance at Edcon 2018 in Toronto.

 

August 2018 – Bitcoins yearly energy consumption becomes larger than the yearly energy consumption of Switzerland.

 

2017-2019 – Third generation blockchain networks are launching, notably: Decred, Tezos, Blockstack, Polkadot and Chia.

 

February 2019 – Ethereum has lost ~92% of its value since January 2018 and Bitcoin ~82% since December 2017.