18
votes
When, if ever, will "peak bitcoin" occur?
According to comments by the project's founder, Bitcoin's issuance rate was indeed inspired by that of precious metals. However, it is implemented algorithmically, of course, which artificially limits ...
- 77.8k
16
votes
Accepted
How did peer discovery work in Bitcoin v0.1?
The first seed mechanism was IRC-based. There was a hardcoded IRC server and IRC channel (#bitcoin on Freenode), and the Bitcoin client would connect to the server, and join the channel with a ...
- 110k
13
votes
Accepted
Why is there a 5 days gap between genesis and block 1?
While the Genesis block is timestamped 3rd of January, the hash of the Genesis block is astonishingly low. It has been theorized that Satoshi set himself a more challenging target for the Genesis ...
- 77.8k
11
votes
Accepted
How did pay-to-pubkey hash come about? What is its history?
Pay to Public Key Hash has existed for the entirety of Bitcoin's life. P2PKH addresses have existed since the earliest release of Bitcoin. Creating P2PKH addresses and sending to P2PKH addresses was ...
- 72.1k
9
votes
Where can I access the original, Satoshi written Bitcoin code?
This page contains files for the first three available Bitcoin codebases written by Satoshi Nakamoto.
http://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/code/
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9
votes
Accepted
What was the first altcoin?
Litecoin was not the first altcoin. It actually uses ideas for altcoins that precede it but had died before it was created. This is mentioned in its announcement thread on bitcointalk.. The very first ...
- 72.1k
9
votes
Was the addition of OP_NOP codes in Bitcoin 0.3.6 a hard or soft fork?
When the script interpreter encounters an unknown opcode (the default: case inside the switch statement), it returns false. That aborts verification and considers the transaction to be invalid. This ...
- 110k
8
votes
Accepted
How was the dust limit of 546 satoshis was chosen? Why not 550 satoshis?
The dust limit is not actually fixed, technically - it varies based on the type of output. 546 satoshis is simply the most commonly known one, for a p2pkh output. Being the longest-lived output type, ...
- 17.3k
8
votes
Accepted
What is the significance of Bitcoin Pizza Day, and when is it celebrated?
Bitcoin Pizza Day is celebrated on May 22nd. On this day in 2010, a BitcoinTalk member bought pizza in exchange for 10,000 BTC. This represents more or less the first known transaction using bitcoins ...
- 96
8
votes
Accepted
Why are OP_MUL and OP_DIV disabled in Bitcoin?
OP_MUL and OP_DIV were removed by Satoshi Nakamoto in commit 4bd188c4383d6e614e18f79dc337fbabe8464c82. As with most changes in early days of the development, little rationale was explicitly given by ...
- 9,127
7
votes
Accepted
Was it always required for the Coinbase transaction to be the first transaction in a block?
This is not true. Code and code comments in v0.1.5 (the oldest tagged version in git) enforce that there always is a coinbase transaction and that it must always be the first. There cannot be a ...
- 72.1k
7
votes
What was the longest held UTXO ever spent?
As of June 19 2019, using the following query:
bitcoin-indexer=> select reverse_bytes(output_tx.hash_id || output_tx.hash_rest),
output.tx_idx,
output_tx.current_height,
input_tx.current_height,...
- 311
7
votes
Accepted
How could Bitcoin developers handle and resolve severe software vulnerability without drawing public attention?
How can a severe security bug be fixed in a new version without the public becoming aware of the fix, preventing anyone from exploiting the bug?
It is extremely difficult for the reasons you point ...
- 15.8k
7
votes
Accepted
What was the largest UTXO ever created in bitcoin’s entire history?
No, the largest output ever created was 500,000 BTC:
29a3efd3ef04f9153d47a990bd7b048a4b2d213daaa5fb8ed670fb85f13bdbcf
I used this Blockchair query to find out: https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/outputs?s=...
- 10.4k
6
votes
Accepted
When was the paper of bitcoin announced?
According to the mailing list archives, the mailing list received Satoshi's email at Fri Oct 31 14:10:00 EDT 2008. However the mailing list is moderated so perhaps the email was not received by ...
- 72.1k
6
votes
Where can I access the original, Satoshi written Bitcoin code?
Here is the first version uploaded to sourceforge:
https://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/code/1/tree//trunk/
- 61
6
votes
What was the first altcoin?
As described by Ava Chow, Namecoin was the first altcoin created as such. It was announced on 2011-04-18.
However, according to the topic "Testnet version history" the Testnet1 was reset ...
- 77.8k
6
votes
Satoshi's final statement
Ultimate necro, but it was Mike Hearn. You can find multiple emails between Satoshi Nakamoto and himself from back then at his site here: http://plan99.net/%7Emike/
The specific quote you've found is ...
6
votes
Accepted
When did the main Bitcoin client become known as Bitcoin Core? When/Why/How did this happen?
The renaming was merged in December 2013 with prior discussion on this GitHub issue. The general motivation was to distinguish between one particular implementation of the Bitcoin protocol (many refer ...
- 15.8k
6
votes
Accepted
Where can I find the technical discussion between Satoshi and other contributors in the sourceforge website?
Try https://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org
I believe this group has attempted to consolidate all known messages written by Satoshi Nakamoto on their site.
- 5,184
6
votes
Accepted
When did Bitcoin Core deprecate the mining function?
Arguably, never: Bitcoin Core still has a rudimentary mining function built-in, as it is used for testing purposes (on testing networks where the difficulty is lower). CPU mining has however been ...
- 110k
6
votes
Accepted
Where was the term "coinbase" first coined, who first used it?
The term "coinbase" was most likely coined by Satoshi through the IsCoinbase method of the CTransaction class. It was both part of the first publicly distributed version of the source code ...
- 9,127
6
votes
Accepted
What are the last common blocks of Bitcoin and its hard forks (Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin SV etc.)?
Here listed only the top 4 forks by market cap (on 2023-10-12).
Name
Symbol
Market Cap
Fork Date / Forked From
Last Common Block with Bitcoin
Bitcoin
BTC
$523.0bn
N/A
N/A
Bitcoin Cash
BCH
$4.2bn
...
- 1,190
5
votes
How was the dust limit of 546 satoshis was chosen? Why not 550 satoshis?
Bitcoin core sets the dust limit to a value where spending an output would exceed 1/3 of its value. This calculation is based on the node's setting for the minimum relay transaction fee (see option -...
- 493
5
votes
How did Nakamoto untraceably pay for registering bitcoin.org?
How did Nakamoto untraceably pay for registering bitcoin.org?
Nobody knows for certain apart from Nakamoto and the businesses involved.
Nakamoto was (and remains) notably secretive and their true ...
- 28.5k
5
votes
Accepted
When did Satoshi Nakamoto release Bitcoin v.0.1 to the public? 08 Jan 09 or 09 Jan 09?
It depends on how you define release.
Satoshi sent the email to the Cryptography mailing list on Jan 8 2009 UTC. However because the Cryptography mailing list is moderated, that email did not reach ...
- 72.1k
5
votes
Accepted
What has OP_RETURN been used for over Bitcoin's history?
pourteaux answered this in a Twitter thread.
The story starts in 2010, when there was debate on bitcointalk about a proposal to include a DNS service on bitcoin called BitDNS. There was concern (...
- 15.8k
5
votes
Who first started to name 'blockchain technology' as 'blockchain'
The first use of the phrase "block chain" was by Hal Finney in his response to Satoshi's email with the whitepaper. Over time, the two words have been combined into the single word "...
- 72.1k
5
votes
What was the bug for the Bitcoin value overflow in 2010?
Your first source is wrong.
The block in question contained three transactions: the first is a coinbase transaction, the second is the one that did the overflow. The third is unknown, and not relevant....
- 72.1k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible