As the world of Bitcoin has evolved to form its own culture and celebrations since it came in to existence, there have been key dates that are celebrated and remembered each year by Bitcoiners.
The conversations and topics on Bitcointalk forums formed some of the more celebrated occasions as the cypherpunks and early adopters embraced the new technology that Satoshi Nakamoto had unleashed on the world.
If you wanted, you could spend months diving down back through the early history and discussions from the visionaries at the time – it’s quite a rabbit hole!
However, since the even earlier early days, there have been many more events that shook the world and marked huge milestones in Bitcoin’s growth.
We have curated a list of the main Bitcoin anniversaries each year that you will see pop up in various online discussions in the Bitcoin community – here’s what we have so far in calendar order with the first year the event happened in brackets and the block height calculated from Time in Blocks.
Let us know in the comments if you have other Bitcoin days you celebrate.
List of Key Bitcoin Anniversaries
- January 3rd (2009) – Block 0 – “Bitcoin’s Birthday”
- The genesis block is mined and Bitcoin is born in 2009
- January 10th (2017) – Block 447,539 – “Lightning Network Launches“
- The alpha version of the lightning network from Lightning Labs launches, allowing developers to build applications on top and for anyone to send sats instantly with low fee transactions across the network
- January 12th (2009) – Block 170 – “First Bitcoin Transaction”
- The first Bitcoin transaction is made from Satoshi to fellow cypherpunk Hal Finney
- January 14th (2016) – Block 393,287 – “Bitcoin Lightning Whitepaper Release“
- The whitepaper for Bitcoin’s lightning network scaling solution is published by Joseph Poon and Thaddeus Dryja.
- February 7th (2014) – Block 284,615 – “MtGox Collapse”/”Not Your Keys Day“
- MtGox was a Bitcoin exchange that suffered the biggest hack in exchange history with well over 800,000 Bitcoins lost. They froze withdrawals on this day and many learned the lesson on the importance of not your keys, not your coins
- March 6th (2014) – Block 289,188 – “Dorian Nakamoto Scandal“
- First reported in Newsweek, a journalist reports about discovering the creator of Bitcoin, Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto, in Los Angeles, USA, and asked him some questions about Bitcoin. The man denied any association with Bitcoin and, of course, there have been many memes created since.
- April 27th (2022) – Block 733,796 – “Central African Republic Legal Tender“
- Following in El Salvador’s footsteps, Central African Republic became the 2nd country to make Bitcoin as legal tender.
- May 21st (2021) – Block 684,419 – “China Bans Bitcoin Mining“
- May 22nd (2010) – Block 56,983 – “Bitcoin Pizza Day”
- Developer Laszlo Hanyecz provided the first use of Bitcoin as money by paying 10,000 BTC for 2 pizzas at Papa Johns worth about $40 at the time. Legend.
- August 15th (2015) – Block 369,966 – “Blocksize War Begins“
- Two Bitcoin developers released a “new version” of Bitcoin with larger block sizes that was incompatible with the original chain. This sparked the biggest debate in Bitcoin’s history as they forked themselves away from Bitcoin.
- August 28th (2014) – Block 317,909 – “Hal Finney’s ‘Bitcoin & Me’ Post“
- Hal Finney was the first person to receive Bitcoin and was at the forefront of Bitcoin’s early development. Unfortunately he was taken from us too soon and his heart wrenching post in Bitcointalk about his crippling ALS disease will leave you inspired, yet humbled.
- September 7th (2021) – Block 699,479 – “El Salvador Legal Tender“
- The first country to make Bitcoin legal tender was El Salvador, a huge milestone in global adoption.
- October 5th (2009) – Block 24,395 – “First Bitcoin Price”
- The first Bitcoin price was calculated to be $0.0018316 per Bitcoin by those that were mining Bitcoin on their computers
- October 31st (2008) – Block -9,254 🙂 – “Bitcoin Whitepaper”
- The whitepaper of Bitcoin is published
- December 12th (2010) – Block 97,184 – “Satoshi Disappears“
- The final public message from Satoshi was sent in Bitcointalk. It’s possible that the Wikileaks discussion around using Bitcoin at the time was the last straw but we can only speculate.
Bitcoin Calendar
Coinkite have worked their magic and created a Bitcoin Calendar highlighting all the key dates, including more that have been missed in my list above. You can add this in to your Google, Outlook and iCalendar so you never miss a key date again!
