13 years ago today: the first Bitcoin transaction

Today marks the thirteenth anniversary of the very first bitcoin transaction. On the receiving end was computer scientist Hal Finney, who was sent 10 bitcoins from Satoshi Nakamoto; the network’s mysterious, pseudonymous creator in 2008.

Future foundation

The transaction on the already historic date proved that Bitcoin, as a money network, indeed worked and laid the foundation for future growth. This was a week after Nakamoto started running the Bitcoin network on their computer system.

What did this transaction look like?

The transaction ID is f4184fc596403b9d638783cf57adfe4c75c605f6356fbc91338530e9831e9e16 and can be found on all block explorers, such as Blockstream. The transaction was included in the 170th block of the blockchain.

The real identity of Satoshi

The receiving party, Hal Finney, died in 2014 from a rare muscle disease. He is known for his work in advanced cryptography systems and is the second person to run bitcoin’s core client. The first is, of course, Satoshi Nakamoto. Some even believe himself was Nakamoto, a theory that circulates until his day. Finney, however, denied the claims until his death. Finney cryonically frozen his body in hopes of seeing the future someday.

“I mined block 70-something, and I was the recipient of the first bitcoin transaction when Satoshi sent me ten coins as a test,” Finney wrote in a post on Bitcointalk forum in 2009. In his last post on this forum, he said that Satoshi Nakamoto’s true identity still remained a mystery to him. Those ten bitcoins were worth next to nothing at the time, but at the current bitcoin rate, this would be worth over 350,000 dollars.

The first ever Bitcoin tweet

Finney happened to be the very first in the world to tweet about bitcoin, which was published a day before the first ever Bitcoin transaction. In the legendary tweet, Finney wrote: “Running bitcoin. Despite his death, his Twitter account is still online and thirteen years later, the network is stronger than ever.”

Predictions

Despite his illness, Finney’s mind remained sharp. He had strong visions about the future and talked about a scenario where banks with bitcoin as collateral would release their own cryptocurrency. These coins could then be exchanged for bitcoin at that bank. According to Finney, these banks would not issue national currencies, but each give their own taste to the coins. This is very interesting and very close to the truth.

Several crypto exchanges, such as Binance, Coinbase and FTX, have issued their own cryptocurrencies. For example, Binance has released Binance coin, and it can be traded on Binance for bitcoin.

Finney was also one of the first to make a price prediction for bitcoin. He estimated in an email, which was initially lost but later recovered, to Nakamoto in 2009 that bitcoin could be worth 10 million dollars. He calculated this based on total global household wealth (between $100 and $300 trillion) and extrapolated that with Bitcoin’s finite supply of 21 million coins.

Central banks and their own digital currencies

Finney’s vision has yet to become reality. At the moment, fiat money still plays a major role in the exchange of cryptocurrency on these crypto exchanges. In addition, central banks are now working hard on their own cryptos. Just about every central bank in the world, including the EU, the US, Japan and China, has been working on its own digital central bank currency, or the famous CBDCs, since 2020. As it stands, China will be the first to adopt its own currency.