History of the Bitcoin

Before Bitcoin

• 1977: First description of RSA encryption that uses a public key to encrypt and a private key to decrypt confidential data.

• 1979: Ralph Merkle invents the mechanism of compression by the Merkle tree, or Merkle Tree compression mechanism. It is used to store and verify a large volume of data efficiently and securely and used by the Bitcoin protocol to calculate the Merkle root of all transactions contained in a data block.

• 1990: American mathematician David Chaum invents DigiCash an electronic currency (centralized and proprietary) based on cryptographic protocols.

• 1991: Stuart Haber and W. Scott Stornetta, in an article entitled "How to Time-stamp a Digital Document", quoted by Satoshi Nakamoto in his white paper, set out the principles of what would later be called a chain of blocks.

• 1992: Scott Vanstone (Certicom) proposes the Elliptic curve digital signature algorithm (ECDSA) algorithm that uses shorter keys and allows faster signature and encryption than RSA.

• 1994: Nick Szabo advances the idea of ​​"smart contract", computer transaction protocol that executes the terms of a contract.

• June 18, 1996: the NSA publishes a report entitled "How to produce money: the cryptography of anonymous electronic cash".

• 1997: Adam Back, who later became Satoshi Nakamoto's first interlocutor, invented Hashcash, a system of proof of work. The idea had already been explored by Cynthia Dwork and Moni Naor in a report called Pricing via Processing or Combatting Junk Mail published in 1993, but Adam Back had not been aware of this work.

• 1998: Bankruptcy of DigiCash. Wei Dai launches the idea of ​​a digital cash based on a registry distributed on the cypherpunks mailing list.

• May 1999: Henri Massias, Xavier Serret-Avila, and Jean-Jacques Quisquater describe a secure timestamp service without trusted third parties. This document will be mentioned later in the Bitcoin White Paper.

• June 1999: Shawn Fanning, with Napster, invented peer-to-peer (P2P) technology. The Napster audio file sharing platform, however, operated with a central server (called farm), which played the role of a centralized registry of all files belonging to or requested by peers. This centralized system was Napster's Single Point of Failure (SPOF) and the site was closed by the FBI in 2001 for infringement of intellectual property rights.

• 2000: Tom Pepper and Justin Frankel develop Gnutella, the first fully distributed P2P file transfer platform.

• 2001: Publication of Masashi's The Security Assessment of Time Stamping Schemes One who talks about "chain of time stamp" and conceptualizes something even more similar to the blockchain (without mining).

• From 1998 to 2005: Nick Szabo develops the BitGold project, a decentralized digital currency based on falsifiable chains of proofs of work and using many elements that will be found in Bitcoin: timestamping, digital signatures, public keys. Reveals however too vulnerable to attacks.

• 2004: Development of Ripplepay, a decentralized monetary system.
  

2008

• August 19, 2008: Satoshi Nakamoto (pseudonym) reserves the domain name bitcoin.org.

• October 31, 2008: Announcement of the birth of Bitcoin. The first specification and proof of concept of Bitcoin is published in the Cryptography mailing list by Satoshi Nakamoto.

• November 9, 2008: In a message addressed to Satoshi Nakamoto, Hal Finney speaks for the first time of "Block chain". Nakamoto talked until then of "timestamp server".

2009

• 3 January: creation of the first block.

• January 11: Bitcoin 0.1.10 alpha version is available for download at sourceforge.

• January 12: First transaction in bitcoins between Satoshi Nakamoto and Hal Finney. It is entered in block 170 and its amount is 10 BTC.

• February 17: Announcement of the creation of Bitcoin on the site P2Pfoundation and publication of a first version of the software.

• August: only 1564 blocks are extracted during the month against an average of 4464 expected. Hypothesis: Satoshi Nakamoto is on vacation and he disconnected his miners.

• October 5: Publication of the first bitcoin / dollar exchange rate. A bitcoin is worth about 0.001 USD, or about 0.00071 €.

• December 30: the mining difficulty is now greater than 1 for the first time.
  

2010

• April: Laszlo Hanyecz, a Floridian developer, is successfully experimenting with GPU mining (graphic processor).

• May 21: Hanyecz buys two pizzas for 10,000 bitcoins.

• July 11: Bitcoin version 0.3 is mentioned on the Slashdot technology news site, which results in an influx of new users for a few days.

• July 17: Establishment of a trading card trading platform, named MtGox, which will for a time become the largest trading place for bitcoins.

• August 15: Jeff spotted a strange block. A flaw in the protocol allowed the generation of 92 billion bitcoins. The bug is quickly corrected, and we return to a previous state of Blockchain to cancel this fraudulent creation.

• August 17: The bitcoin is worth 0,06 €.

• November 7: The bitcoin reaches 0,40 €.

• December 12th: Last post posted by Satoshi Nakamoto on the main forum. He leaves the project, announcing that he has just moved on. He passes his hand to Gavin Andresen by entrusting him the key of alert and giving him access to the project SourceForge Bitcoin.

2011

• February: Bitcoin reached parity with the dollar and then, a few days later, with the euro.

• June: Bitcoin suddenly receives the attention of the media, creating a speculative bubble.

• June 10: The bitcoin goes up to 28 €. But the bubble deflates slowly in the months that follow.

• June 23: Eight days after a hack of its platform, Mark Karpeles, CEO of MTGox, sends a transaction of 424 242,42424242 bitcoins in order to prove the solvency of the company.

• August 19: Amir Taaki outlines the guiding principles for Bitcoin Improvement Proposals (BIPs) through BIP0001.

• December 12: A transaction of 35 bitcoins is sent with 171 bitcoins of fees.
  

2012

• 15 February: adoption of BIP 16, "hard fork", which solves some problems related to multisignature transactions, after a vote of 55% of the network (550 blocks per 1000).

• April: Launch of the gambling site Satoshi Dice. In two months the number of transactions on the network will be multiplied by five.

• September 27: The Bitcoin Foundation is created to standardize, protect and promote the Bitcoin.

• October: The European Central Bank publishes a first report on virtual currencies, notably Bitcoin.

• November 15: The WordPress blog hosting platform accepts bitcoins for its additional paid services.

• November 28: Division of the reward of mining, from 50 to 25 BTC.

• December 4: Meni Rosenfeld publishes the "white paper" of Colored coins, a meta-protocol that allows to associate real assets with Bitcoin addresses.
  

2013

• 14 February: the Reddit community site is setting up a system to buy "Reddit Gold" with bitcoins.

• March 12: incident related to a non-backward compatibility of version 0.8.0: the string was separated into several versions and some remained blocked for a few hours. Users are advised to go back to the previous version and one of the two versions of the chain of blocks is finally adopted with relatively few contentious transactions.

• 28 March: Cypriot banks reopen after twelve days of closure. Establishment of a strict control of the capital which pushes some savers to turn to Bitcoin.

• April 9: The price reached 287 euros, new historical record.

• 10 April from 4 pm: collapse of the value of the Bitcoin and which fell to 39 € on Thursday 11 April. During the following weeks, the price will fluctuate around 80 euros.

• June 27: Andreas Schildbach and Mike Hearn imagine unidirectional payment channels for off-chain transactions.

• July 29: creation of the Digital Asset Transfer Authority (DATA), a new regulator that sets itself the task of producing standards to ensure that crypto-currencies evolve in compliance with legislation and regulations.

• August 16: Germany gives a status to Bitcoin, that of private money.

• September 6: Ben Bernanke, President of the US Federal Reserve, addresses a letter to a Senate committee in which he presents Bitcoin as a fast, secure and efficient payment system.

• October 2: Closure of the clandestine site Silk Road, market platform for all kinds of illicit products using Bitcoin. This news reassures investors and the course of the bitcoin will begin a new period of progression.

• October 15: Baidu, the Chinese search engine accepts payments in Bitcoin for one of its services: Jiasule.

• November 3, 2013: The online auction platform eBay, parent company of PayPal, expresses interest in Bitcoin.

• November: The course races and breaks records on 7: 234 €. On the 17th he passed the 500 dollars mark, the 18th the 500 € mark.

• November 19, 2013: The US Federal Reserve (Fed) and the US Department of Justice have a rather positive view that the bitcoin qualifies as "legitimate" currency and former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke says it has Of "potential".

• November 21: The University of Nicosia agrees that tuition fees be paid in bitcoins and announces the opening of a Master of Economics specializing in digital currencies.

• November 22: Travel agency CheapAir.com announces that it accepts Bitcoin for all flights in its catalog.

• November 22: The Bitcoin network records the biggest transaction ever: 194 993 bitcoins.

• November 28: Bitcoin passes the one thousand dollar mark (US) and for the first time crossed the 100,000 mark in a single day.

• December: Surprises by the rise of Bitcoin, the central banks of China, France, Europe, Mauritius and India panic.

• December 4: Bitcoin peaked at $ 1240 ($ 912) on MtGox $ 1175 on Bitfinex, $ 1153 on Bitstamp and $ 850 on Bitcoin-Central.

• December 5: The Central Bank of China announces that it is urging the financial and banking institutions of the country not to use the electronic currency. The course of the bitcoin drops sharply. On the same day, the Banque de France published a note that was rather hostile to Bitcoin.

• December 6: Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Fed, and one of the main contributors to the 2007-2011 financial crisis that has led the world into recession, calls Bitcoin a "speculative bubble".

• December 10: Apple banned the use of bitcoins via its applications.

• December 12: The European Banking Authority (EBA) in turn warns Bitcoin users in a document entitled Warning to consumers on virtual currencies.

• December 18: The Bank of Mauritius (central bank of Mauritius) warns the public about the risks associated with virtual currencies, especially Bitcoin.

• December 24: The Central Bank of India (Reserve Bank of India) communicates in turn around the virtual currencies, especially Bitcoin.
  

2014

Zynga, who plays social games (FarmVille 2, CastleVille, ChefVille, CoasterVille, Hidden Chronicles, Hidden Shadows and CityVille), decides to test Bitcoin for the payment of in-game purchases.

• January 10: The American Overstock.com becomes the biggest company that accepts Bitcoin.

• January 15: The French Senate holds a hearing on the issues related to the development of virtual currencies of the Bitcoin type.

• January 21st: The University of Cumbria in England now accepts that the tuition fees be paid in bitcoins.

• January 23: TigerDirect, an American giant of hardware sales, adopts Bitcoin.

• January 27: The Central Bank of the Russian Federation issues a warning against Bitcoin.

• January 29: ACPR sets the framework within which it is allowed to sell bitcoins in France.

• February 7: The Japanese trading platform Mt.Gox is no longer able to handle the influx of withdrawal requests and freezes the holdings in bitcoins. The price falls.

• February 10: Mt.Gox platform managers alert the community about the "malleability of transactions" problem that causes serious malfunctioning on the platform.

• 11 February: The Bitcoin network is the victim of a massive and concerted attack launched on many foreign exchange platforms.

• February 13: The owner of the self-proclaimed black market platform "Silk Road 2" announces the Bitcoins filed by its customers were stolen.

• February 25: MtGox closes, the oldest exchange platform.

• February 28: MtGox officially declared bankruptcy.

• 3 March: HMRC, the UK government department responsible for collecting taxes, publishes a document on the tax treatment of crypto-currencies, which is very favorable to Bitcoin.

• 6 March: Newsweek reporter Leah McGrath Goodman claims to have found Satoshi Nakamoto. The day after this revelation a terse message is since the original account of the creator of Bitcoin, inactive for more than 4 years denies this information.

• March: Mastercard hires five lobbyists who will focus on Bitcoin. The Bitcoin Foundation responds by engaging Jim Harper as a "world political advisor".

• March 14: Release of Bitcoin Core 9.0 which introduces OP_RETURN. This script can store 80 bytes of arbitrary data or metadata, making it easy to create non-monetary applications on the Bitcoin blockchain.

• March 23: The historical platform Vircurex suspends its operations.

• March 25: The United States gives tax status to Bitcoin.

• March 27: The Chinese press suggests that the Central Bank of China will forbid all banks to hold accounts for bitcoins exchange platforms from 15 April. The price falls.

• April 8: The French company Monoprix announces that it plans to accept Bitcoin. However, the project will be buried a few months later.

• April 8: Gavin Andresen leaves his position as chief developer. Wladimir J. van der Laan succeeded him.

• April 24: Launch of the MtGox platform liquidation procedure.

• April 26: Xapo, an online portfolio service, launches a Bitcoin bank card.

• April 30: The Bloomberg financial and economic information site now displays the Bitcoin price.

• May 9: The Federal Reserve Board (Fed) presents Bitcoin as "a bargain" for the economy.

• 13 May: Inauguration of the Maison du Bitcoin in Paris.

• 14 May: The Economic Affairs Committee of the National Assembly devotes a whole chapter to Bitcoin in a report on the development of the French digital economy.

• May 29: US satellite service provider Dish becomes the largest company in the world to accept Bitcoin.

• June 11: Google Finance displays the course of the bitcoin.

• June 13: The miners' cooperative Ghash.io manages to collect 51% of the mining power of Bitcoin. The power falls again the next day following the mobilization of the community.

• June 24: The Governor of California promulgates a law that removes the legislative obstacles to the use of Bitcoin in that state.

• June 27: The United States Marshals Service (USMS) is auctioning 29656 bitcoins seized at the close of Silk Road in October 2013.

• June 30: Paymium launches the first payment solution in bitcoins made in France.

• 4 July: The European Banking Authority and then the Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF) warn against the so-called virtual currencies, notably Bitcoin, but also suggest a possible regulation.

• July 11: In France, Tracfin publishes a report on "the framing of virtual currencies" and the Minister of Finance and Public Accounts announces concrete measures.

• 11 July: The Official Gazette of Public Finance sets the tax regime for bitcoin in France.

• July 18: Dell, a manufacturer of computers and peripherals, becomes the largest company in the world that adopts Bitcoin.

• July 23: In France, the Senate Finance Committee publishes a report on the stakes associated with the development of Bitcoin and other virtual currencies.

• July 30: Wikipedia accepts donations in bitcoins.

• September 8: Braintree, a subsidiary of eBay owned by PayPal, officially adopts Bitcoin.

• September 23: Paypal allows North American digital goods merchants to accept payments in bitcoins.

• October 1st: The Bitcoin France association officially represents the Bitcoin Foundation in France.

• 22 October: Publication of a white paper on sidechains.

• November 18: The United States Marshals Service (USMS) announces the sale of 50,000 bitcoins seized on Ross Ulbricht's computer at the closing of Silk Road in October 2013.

• 21 and 22 November: First major international conference on Bitcoin in France (Inside Bitcoin Paris).

• December 11: Microsoft accepts payments in bitcoins on its sales platforms in the United States.

2015

• January 5: Flight of 18,864 bitcoins on the Slovenian Bitstamp platform.

• January 14: New bitcoin crash that drops momentarily below the € 155 mark.

• February 18: The US military plans to use "blockchain technology".

• February 19: Ledger, a French company specializing in Bitcoin portfolios secured by smart cards, announces an increase of 1.3 million euros for the development of its activities.

• February 23: Joseph Poon and Thaddeus Dryja publish the White Paper of the Lightning Network, a high-frequency transaction network based on Bitcoin.

• 3 March: The ECB is publishing a new report on "virtual currencies" which essentially targets Bitcoin.

• March 10: The price of the bitcoin rises again and reaches 275 €.

• March 12: Record fund raising for a bitcoin start-up: $ 116 million.

• 13 March: Reuters news agency reveals that IBM is planning to take inspiration from the Bitcoin blockchain to create a payment system.

• April 2: The Swiss banking group UBS announces the opening of a research laboratory dedicated to the potentialities of the blockchain.

• April 9: Orange announces its intention to invest in bitcoin startups.

• 15 April: In France, the Economic, Social and Environmental Council (EESC) unanimously adopts an opinion on the macroeconomic, financial and societal issues of "new currencies".

• May 19: The New York Stock Exchange incorporates the bitcoin price under the NYXBT index.

• May 21: Bitcoin enters the dictionaries Le Petit Robert and Larousse.

• July 24: BNP Paribas plans to integrate Bitcoin into one of its foreign currency funds.

• August 1: arrest of Mark Karpeles, former CEO of Mtgox.

• August 8: protest of many "exchanges" who refuse to comply with the new regulations of New York and close their services to the residents of this State.

• August 15: Mike Hearn and Gavin Andresen launch Bitcoin XT, a concurrent version of Bitcoin Core that modifies the Bitcoin protocol in order to increase the maximum size of the blocks. The initiative worries the markets and the price falls for several days.

• September 15: nine investment banks join forces to define standards for the implementation of a future private blockchain.

• September 17: The CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission), which regulates US stock exchanges, assimilates the bitcoin to a commodity in the same way as gold, wheat and oil.

October 10: Blockstream launches the first sidechain.

• October 12: Luxembourg is the first country to recognize the bitcoins trade nationwide, by granting a payment institution license to SnapSwap International.

• 22 October: the Court of Justice of the European Union is in favor of exemption from VAT on Euro-Bitcoins trade.

• November 3: The Unicode Consortium announces that Bitcoin will benefit from its Unicode symbol in the next version of the alphanumeric character encoding standard expected for 2016.

• November 19: Sergio Demian Lerner publishes Rootstock's white paper, a platform of smart contracts backed by the Bitcoin protocol.

• December 7: Pieter Wuille announces the concept of "Segregated Witness" at the end of the second day of the Scaling Bitcoin workshop in Hong Kong.
  

2016

• February 20: discussion between the main mining cooperatives and the developers of Bitcoin Core around a roadmap that plans the improvements needed to increase the capacity of the Bitcoin network.

• April 4: opening of OpenBazaar, a decentralized market operating with Bitcoin.

• April 25: The Bitstamp bitcoins exchange platform gets approval as a payment institution.

• May 2: Gavin Andresen says Australian entrepreneur Craig Steven Wright is Bitcoin's true father but no evidence is provided and a clue of evidence tends to prove that he is a crook.

• 3 May: The Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs of the European Parliament publishes a report on "virtual currencies" (+ amendments) presented as "likely to contribute positively to the welfare of citizens and economic development".

• May 3: An ordinance modifying the Monetary and Financial Code allows the registration of "minibons" in a "shared electronic recording device allowing the authentication of these operations".

• May 13: Laure de La Raudière, MP, introduced an amendment calling for the recognition by law of "permanent, tamper-resistant, block-of-transaction registers".

• May 26: Marine Le Pen is calling for a ban on Bitcoin.

• May 28: KnCMiner bankruptcy (mining equipment and mining cooperative).

• June 16: The bitcoin reaches 5,000 yuan.

• June 17: "The DAO", the first autonomous organization decentralized on a blockchain, undergoes a major attack.

• June 20: The Australian authorities are auctioning 24,518 bitcoins seized from a former Silkroad user.

• June 21: Deputy Bernard Debré asks "the ban on bitcoins".

• 5 July: The European Commission proposes to include "virtual currency" currency platforms and storage portfolio service providers within the scope of the Anti-Money Laundering Directive.

• July 9: Second "halving" of the bitcoin. The course at 590 €.

• August 2: The Bitfinex platform is the victim of a flight of 119,756 bitcoins.

• September 26: Acinq announces the success of a test of the Flare routing algorithm designed by Bitfury to optimize the cost and speed of the future Bitcoin Lightning Network.

• October 5: Blockstream announces the success of a first end-to-end transaction on a test channel payment network.

• October 27: Release of Bitcoin Core 0.13.1 which integrates the code of Segwit.

• 11 November: The Swiss Federal Railways is testing the sale of bitcoins on all their automatic ticket machines for a period of two years.

• 15 November: Segwit begins its adoption.

• December: Segwit stagnates at 25% adoption.

• December 24: the bitcoin reached the 887 €, the highest level reached in euros.
  

2017

• January 1st: The bitcoin reached the $ 1000 and, at 950 €, beats a new historical record in euros.

• January 4: The bitcoin exceeds 1000 € with a peak at 1087 € on January 5. Record market capitalization: $ 18.5 billion.

• January 5 to February 8: price volatility will drop to 716 € on January 12 after a series of measures taken by the Chinese authorities against the country's trading platforms: inspections, end of margin loans and Free exchanges, administrative closures ...

• 23 February: new record in euros with a peak at 1105 €.

• February 24: new record in dollars with a peak at $ 1222.

• March 10: With a peak at 1227 € / 1340 $, the bitcoin reached its highest level since its creation. The total value of the money supply then approaches the 20 billion euros and exceeds 20 billion dollars.

• March 10 and 29: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission rejects the request for regulatory amendment that would have made possible the creation of the first Bitcoin ETF. An application of the same type, issued by SolidX Bitcoin Trust, will also be rejected on 29 March.

• April 1: Japan recognizes the bitcoin and the so-called "virtual" currencies as legal means of payment.

• May 10: Segwit, which is still only 40% on Bitcoin, is activated on Litecoin.

• May 11: the bitcoin crosses the 10,000 yuan mark.

• 14 May: The Swedish online bank Skandiabanken now allows its customers to buy bitcoins.

• May 16: With the rise of several competitors, Bitcoin now accounts for less than 50% of the money supply of all crypto-coins in circulation.

• May 1 to 21: the course of the bitcoin beats a series of historical records with a peak at 1850 € and 2063 $, on 21 May.

• May 23rd: Digital Currency Group obtains an agreement signed by 56 companies, which together account for more than 83% of the computing power of the Bitcoin network: an 80% Segwit activation and a "hard fork" for an increase in block size At 2Mo.

• from 24 to 25 May: the bitcoin is breaking new historical records with a peak at € 2406 and $ 2760 on May 25.

• June 6: Bitcoins withdrawals are again possible on Chinese platforms. New historical record with a peak at 2603 € and 2933 $.