Ryan Van Wagenen is an executive at Global Private Equity. In 2011, he was promoted to Director within the firm and began covering technology. With that, soon came a focus on Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency as GPE purchased products tied to the blockchain. When it comes to Bitcoin, quite simply you have the largest and the most powerful cryptocurrency on the market to date. Basically, Bitcoin is the reason why cryptocurrencies received the acceleration that they have recently.
So, let’s dive into Bitcoin to understand the history:
Creation of Bitcoin
Back in August 2008, the domain name Bitcoin.org was registered and later that year, the website linked to a paper titled “A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” by author Satoshi Nakamoto. This paper detailed a peer-to-peer based network that generated what was said to be “a system for electronic transactions without relying on trust”.
The first block of Bitcoin was mined by Satoshi Nakamoto himself (block number 0) and the reward was 50 Bitcoins.
The earliest supporters of Bitcoin was programmar Hal Finney, who adopted to, supported and mined Bitcoin starting from the day of release. He received 10 Bitcoins from Nakamoto and the first transaction occurred in January 2009.
Bit gold and B-money creators Nick Szabo and Wei Dai were also early supporters.
During the early days of Bitcoin, Nakamoto has said to have mined over 1 million Bitcoins before disappearing completely from the Bitcoin scene, handing the reigns to the developer Gavin Anderson who also acted as the anarchic face of the disorganized Bitcoin community.
The value of the first Bitcoin transactions were negotiated by individuals on the Bitcoin forum with one notable transaction of 10,000 BTC used to indirectly purchase two pizzas delivered by Papa John’s Pizza. Oh what that delivery boy would pay to get those Bitcoin back!
Early Vulnerabilities with Bitcoin
Ryan Van Wagenen Cryptocurrency pointed out that although the times are good now, early on there were a lot of vulnerabilities and skeptics in Bitcoin. One Harvard Economist, Kenneth Rogoff, has views of Bitcoin falling to $100 being more likely than BTC rising to $100,000 a decade from now.
On 6 August 2010, a significant vulnerability in the Bitcoin process was spotted. Trades weren’t properly confirmed before these were contained in the deal log or blockchain, which let users bypass Bitcoin’s economic constraints and create an indefinite variety of Bitcoins.
On 15 August, the vulnerability was exploited; over 184 billion Bitcoins were made in a purchase, and delivered to two addresses on the network. Within time, the transfer was noticed and erased from the exchange log following the bug was set and the network forked for an up to date version of the Bitcoin standard protocol. This is really the only major security flaw found and exploited in Bitcoin’s record.
Bitcoin Prices Have Been Soaring Over the Past Few Years
January 2009 (creation of Bitcoin) – December 2013
The price went from basically being worth nothing at all to gradually rising and hovering between $750 and $1000. The rise through around 4 years and can be considered gradual. However, it was massive, in a sense, that a Bitcoin was the most valued cryptocurrency to date.
January 2014 – January 2017
This period was relatively hard on Bitcoin; the progress gained in the prior years had essentially been slowed down and decelerated. The worth had risen and fallen with a maximum of $1150, on January 2017 and an all-time low of $200 back in March 2015. This can be considered relatively hard years for Bitcoin. However, the progress and the user base had a steady increase through the years.
Ryan Van Wagenen Technology has learned a lot from his role at Global Private Equity regarding Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency. Bitcoin is massive now and it’s running thousands of businesses and it’s definitely here to stay for a long time.
Ryan Van Wagenen Cryptocurrency: Bitcoin 101
Jacob
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