Bitcoin's history.

On 31 October 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto emailed a nine-page paper to a cryptography mailing list. Everything that followed is here, from two pizzas bought for 10,000 BTC to the halving due in 2028, each with its source and, where it happened on-chain, its block.

2008 to 2012

Miners earned 50 BTC a block until block 210,000, on 28 November 2012.

18 Aug 2008
18 Aug 2008
bitcoin.org is registered
The domain bitcoin.org was registered, about ten weeks before the Bitcoin whitepaper was announced.
Milestones · 13:19 UTCSource
20 Aug 2008
20 Aug 2008
Satoshi emails Adam Back
Satoshi Nakamoto emailed Adam Back, the author of the hashcash paper, to check how he was citing it, and shared a draft of the whitepaper, which he said "finds a new use for hash-based proof-of-work as a way to make e-cash work". Back replied the next day, pointing him to Wei Dai's b-money proposal. The emails became public in 2024, in the UK High Court case that found Craig Wright is not Satoshi.
MilestonesSource
22 Aug 2008
22 Aug 2008
Satoshi emails Wei Dai
After Adam Back pointed him to it, Satoshi Nakamoto emailed Wei Dai about Dai's b-money proposal. His paper, Satoshi wrote, "expands on your ideas into a complete working system", and he asked when b-money was published so he could cite it; the Bitcoin whitepaper lists it as its first reference. The draft he linked was then titled "Electronic Cash Without a Trusted Third Party".
MilestonesSource
31 Oct 2008
31 Oct 2008
The Bitcoin whitepaper
Satoshi Nakamoto announced the paper "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System" on the Cryptography Mailing List, describing electronic cash that works without a bank or other trusted third party.
Milestones · 18:10 UTCSourceWhat happened
3 Jan 2009
3 Jan 2009
The genesis block
The first block of the Bitcoin blockchain, block 0, was created. Its only transaction contains the text "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks".
Milestones · 18:15 UTCSee block 0 See the paymentSourceWhat happened
8 Jan 2009
8 Jan 2009
Bitcoin v0.1 is released
Satoshi Nakamoto announced the first release of the Bitcoin software, a Windows-only program with open-source C++ code, on the Cryptography Mailing List.
Milestones · 19:27 UTCSource
11 Jan 2009
11 Jan 2009
Hal Finney tweets "Running bitcoin"
Cryptographer Hal Finney posted "Running bitcoin" on Twitter, two days after block 1, the first block after the genesis block, was mined.
Milestones · 03:33 UTCSource
12 Jan 2009
12 Jan 2009
The first bitcoin transaction
Satoshi Nakamoto sent 10 bitcoin to Hal Finney in block 170, the first transaction that moved coins from one person to another.
Milestones · 03:30 UTCSee block 170 See the paymentSource
11 Feb 2009
11 Feb 2009
Satoshi introduces Bitcoin on the P2P Foundation forum
Satoshi Nakamoto posted "Bitcoin open source implementation of P2P currency" on the P2P Foundation's forum, describing "a new open source P2P e-cash system" with "no central server or trusted parties". He argued that ordinary money depends on trusting central banks not to debase it and banks to hold it safely.
MilestonesSource
5 Oct 2009
5 Oct 2009
The first bitcoin exchange rate
NewLibertyStandard published an exchange rate of $1.00 = 1,309.03 BTC, the first known price for bitcoin, which valued one bitcoin at well under a tenth of a cent.
MilestonesSource
22 Nov 2009
22 Nov 2009
The Bitcoin forum opens
Satoshi Nakamoto opened a new Bitcoin forum and posted its welcome message. The forum continues today as bitcointalk.org.
Milestones · 18:04 UTCSource
22 May 2010
22 May 2010
Bitcoin Pizza Day
Laszlo Hanyecz paid 10,000 BTC for two pizzas, one of the first known purchases made with bitcoin.
Milestones · 18:16 UTCSee block 57,043 See the paymentSourceWhat happened
11 Jun 2010
11 Jun 2010
The Bitcoin Faucet opens
Gavin Andresen opened the Bitcoin Faucet, a website that gave five bitcoins to each visitor so newcomers could try Bitcoin. By his own count it gave away more than 10,000 bitcoins before closing in 2012.
MilestonesSource
18 Jul 2010
18 Jul 2010
Mt. Gox opens as a bitcoin exchange
Jed McCaleb announced Mt. Gox on the Bitcoin Forum with the words "I just put up a new bitcoin exchange." It went on to become, for a time, the world's leading bitcoin exchange.
Markets · 01:57 UTCSource
20 Jul 2010
20 Jul 2010
Satoshi calls Bitcoin an implementation of b-money and bit gold
In a forum thread about a move to delete Wikipedia's article on Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto wrote that "Bitcoin is an implementation of Wei Dai's b-money proposal", posted to the Cypherpunks mailing list in 1998, "and Nick Szabo's Bitgold proposal".
Milestones · 18:38 UTCSource
15 Aug 2010
15 Aug 2010
The value overflow incident
A transaction in block 74,638 created about 184 billion bitcoin by exploiting a bug in how the software added up large amounts. Satoshi Nakamoto released a fix, Bitcoin 0.3.10, the same day, and the network replaced the bad block.
Network · Until 16 AugSee block 74,638Source
1 Nov 2010
1 Nov 2010
The orange Bitcoin logo is posted
A forum user called bitboy posted a white, tilted version of Satoshi Nakamoto's "B" symbol on an orange circle and put it in the public domain. It became the logo most people now know Bitcoin by.
Milestones · 03:40 UTCSource
4 Dec 2010
4 Dec 2010
Chris Double's mining pool finds a block
Block 95,420 was found by a mining pool that Chris Double ran with server software by a Bitcoin forum user called puddinpop, and its 50-bitcoin reward was split among 23 addresses in the block itself. Double's page calls it "the first public bitcoin mining pool". He shut it down on 17 December, after so many miners had left that another block would take too long.
Milestones · 05:04 UTCSee block 95,420Source
5 Dec 2010
5 Dec 2010
Satoshi asks WikiLeaks not to use Bitcoin
Satoshi Nakamoto wrote on the Bitcoin forum, "I make this appeal to WikiLeaks not to try to use Bitcoin," warning that the attention could destroy the young project. Six days later he wrote that "WikiLeaks has kicked the hornet's nest, and the swarm is headed towards us."
Milestones · 09:08 UTCSource
12 Dec 2010
12 Dec 2010
Satoshi's last forum post
Satoshi Nakamoto posted for the last time on the Bitcoin forum, announcing version 0.3.19 with new limits against denial-of-service attacks (attempts to overload nodes).
Milestones · 18:22 UTCSource
16 Dec 2010
16 Dec 2010
Slush's mining pool finds its first block
Marek Palatinus, known as slush, opened his mining pool to everyone just after midnight, and it found its first block, 97,834, that morning. The pool collected each block's reward in its own wallet and paid its miners from there. First called Bitcoin.cz Mining Pool, it is now Braiins Pool.
Milestones · 07:16 UTCSee block 97,834Source
19 Dec 2010
19 Dec 2010
Gavin Andresen takes over running Bitcoin
"With Satoshi's blessing", Gavin Andresen began managing the Bitcoin project, with changes proposed as pull requests on GitHub and discussed before they were added.
MilestonesSource
9 Feb 2011
9 Feb 2011
Bitcoin reaches $1
One bitcoin traded for $1.00 on Mt. Gox for the first time, reaching parity with the US dollar.
Markets · 19:54 UTCSource
23 Apr 2011
23 Apr 2011
Satoshi writes "I've moved on to other things"
In an email to developer Mike Hearn, Satoshi Nakamoto wrote "I've moved on to other things. It's in good hands with Gavin and everyone." It is one of the last messages known to have come from Bitcoin's creator.
MilestonesSource
14 Jun 2011
14 Jun 2011
WikiLeaks starts accepting bitcoin
WikiLeaks announced that it would take donations in bitcoin, after Visa, Mastercard and Bank of America had cut off donations to it and PayPal had frozen its funds. The first payments to its published address were confirmed in block 130,863 later that day.
MilestonesSource
19 Jun 2011
19 Jun 2011
A hacked Mt. Gox account crashes the price to a cent
Someone used a compromised Mt. Gox administrator account to sell a huge number of bitcoins on the exchange, driving its price there from $17.50 to $0.01 within 30 minutes. Mt. Gox halted trading to roll back the suspect trades and reopened on 26 June; prices on other exchanges fell far less.
MarketsSource
21 Nov 2011
21 Nov 2011
Bitcoin 0.5.0 brings the Bitcoin-Qt window
Bitcoin 0.5.0 replaced the program's window with "a completely new graphical interface that uses the Qt user interface toolkit", released as Bitcoin-Qt. Mara van der Laan had started it as a separate project in May 2011, and took over Bitcoin Core from Gavin Andresen in 2014.
NetworkSource
1 Mar 2012
1 Mar 2012
Bitcoins stolen in the Linode break-in
An intruder used a customer-service portal at Linode, a web host, to get into the accounts of eight of its customers, all connected with bitcoin, and moved bitcoins out of their servers. The losses included 3,094 BTC waiting to be paid out by Marek Palatinus's mining pool, which he covered from his own money; more than 10,000 from the trading site Bitcoinica, by its own count; and the few coins in Gavin Andresen's Bitcoin Faucet.
MarketsSee block 169,187 See the paymentSource
1 Apr 2012
1 Apr 2012
Pay to script hash (P2SH) activates
Pay to script hash (P2SH, BIP 16) took effect from block 173,805, the first block timestamped after midnight UTC on 1 April 2012. It lets anyone pay to a short address starting with 3 that stands for spending rules of any complexity, such as needing several signatures, which the recipient reveals only when spending.
Network · 00:43 UTCSee block 173,805Source
27 Sept 2012
27 Sept 2012
The Bitcoin Foundation launches
Gavin Andresen announced the Bitcoin Foundation, a non-profit "modeled on the Linux Foundation" that went on to pay some of Bitcoin's core developers.
MilestonesSource

2012 to 2016

Miners earned 25 BTC a block until block 420,000, on 9 July 2016.

28 Nov 2012
28 Nov 2012
The first halving
At block 210,000 the reward for mining a block fell from 50 to 25 bitcoin, the first halving. The software halves the reward every 210,000 blocks, roughly every four years.
Network · 15:24 UTCSee block 210,000Source
19 Feb 2013
19 Feb 2013
Bitcoin 0.8 keeps a set of unspent coins
Bitcoin 0.8.0 was released. Built on a change by Pieter Wuille, it checked new transactions against a database of only the unspent outputs, now called the UTXO set, instead of an index of every past transaction, which made it much faster. It also moved from Berkeley DB to LevelDB, which three weeks later let it accept a block that older versions rejected, splitting the chain.
NetworkSource
11 Mar 2013
11 Mar 2013
The March 2013 chain split
A large block at height 225,430 was accepted by Bitcoin 0.8 but rejected by older versions, splitting the blockchain in two. Large mining pools switched back to version 0.7 so the network reunited on the older versions' chain.
Network · Until 12 MarSee block 225,430Source
18 Mar 2013
18 Mar 2013
US treats bitcoin exchanges as money transmitters
FinCEN, the US Treasury's financial-crimes unit, said businesses that exchange or administer convertible virtual currency, the category bitcoin falls in, are money transmitters. People who only use it to buy goods or services are not.
PolicySource
22 Aug 2013
22 Aug 2013
Gregory Maxwell describes CoinJoin
Gregory Maxwell described CoinJoin on the Bitcoin forum: a way for several people to combine their payments into one transaction, so that an outsider cannot tell which of them owns which output. He wrote that it "involves no changes to the Bitcoin protocol".
Milestones · 02:32 UTCSource
10 Sept 2013
10 Sept 2013
BIP 39 sets out recovery words
Marek Palatinus, Pavol Rusnák and Aaron Voisine created BIP 39, a standard for writing a wallet's backup as a list of 12 to 24 words, which "could be written on paper or spoken over the telephone".
NetworkSource
2 Oct 2013
2 Oct 2013
FBI shuts down Silk Road
The FBI shut down Silk Road, a hidden online market for illegal drugs where buyers paid in bitcoin, and arrested Ross Ulbricht, who was later convicted of running it.
PolicySource
29 Oct 2013
29 Oct 2013
The first bitcoin ATM opens
A bitcoin ATM made by Robocoin went live in a Waves Coffee House in downtown Vancouver, Canada. CBC News reported it as a world first: after scanning the customer's palm, it swapped Canadian dollars for bitcoin and back.
Milestones · 16:00 UTCSourceWhat happened
27 Nov 2013
27 Nov 2013
Bitcoin passes $1,000
Bitcoin traded at $1,000 on Mt. Gox, then the world's largest exchange for buying bitcoin with US dollars, for the first time.
Markets · 14:49 UTCSource
5 Dec 2013
5 Dec 2013
China bars banks from bitcoin business
China's central bank and four other regulators barred banks and payment companies from handling bitcoin, calling it a virtual commodity rather than real money. Individuals could still trade it at their own risk.
PolicySource
18 Dec 2013
18 Dec 2013
The "HODL" post
A bitcointalk user called GameKyuubi posted "I AM HODLING" during a sharp price fall, misspelling "holding". "HODL" became slang for keeping bitcoin rather than selling it.
Milestones · 10:03 UTCSource
7 Feb 2014
7 Feb 2014
Mt. Gox halts withdrawals
Mt. Gox stopped all bitcoin withdrawals, saying it needed to fix a technical problem. Trading on the exchange continued.
MarketsSource
28 Feb 2014
28 Feb 2014
Mt. Gox files for bankruptcy
Mt. Gox filed for bankruptcy protection in Tokyo, saying it had lost about 850,000 bitcoins, 750,000 of them belonging to customers.
MarketsSourceWhat happened
25 Mar 2014
25 Mar 2014
IRS says bitcoin is property for US tax
The US tax agency said virtual currency such as bitcoin is treated as property, not currency, for federal tax, so the general tax rules for property apply.
PolicySource
7 Apr 2014
7 Apr 2014
Mara van der Laan takes over Bitcoin Core
Gavin Andresen announced that Mara van der Laan, who had first joined Bitcoin by rebuilding its user interface, would take over from him as "Bitcoin Core Maintainer" so that he could focus on the protocol. Andresen had yet to meet his successor in person.
MilestonesSource
29 Jul 2014
29 Jul 2014
The Trezor hardware wallet launches
The Trezor Model One was launched: a small, single-purpose computer for keeping a wallet's private keys in isolation. Trezor calls it the first hardware wallet. Marek Palatinus (slush) and Pavol Rusnák (stick) began it as a hobby project.
MilestonesSource
28 Aug 2014
28 Aug 2014
Hal Finney dies
Hal Finney, the cryptographer who received the first bitcoin transaction from Satoshi Nakamoto, died aged 58, five years after he was diagnosed with ALS (motor neurone disease). As he had arranged, his body was cryopreserved by the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona.
MilestonesSource
22 Oct 2014
22 Oct 2014
The sidechains paper
Adam Back, Gregory Maxwell, Pieter Wuille, Luke Dashjr and five other developers published "Enabling Blockchain Innovations with Pegged Sidechains". It proposed moving bitcoin onto separate blockchains with new features and back again, with any fault in a sidechain confined to that sidechain.
MilestonesSource
29 May 2015
29 May 2015
Ross Ulbricht is sentenced to life in prison
Judge Katherine B. Forrest sentenced Ross Ulbricht to life in prison for running Silk Road, the hidden online market for illegal drugs where buyers paid in bitcoin, and ordered him to forfeit $183,961,921. A jury had convicted him of seven offences in February. President Trump pardoned him in January 2025.
PolicySource
24 Jun 2015
24 Jun 2015
New York's BitLicense takes effect
New York's BitLicense came into force. Firms now needed a licence from the state's financial regulator before running a virtual currency business in New York.
PolicySource
4 Jul 2015
4 Jul 2015
The July 2015 chain split
Just after the BIP 66 upgrade took effect, a small miner produced an invalid block at height 363,731, and large pools that were building on new blocks without checking them first ("SPV mining") added five more blocks on top. The valid chain overtook the six invalid blocks about an hour and a half later, and lightweight wallets were advised to wait for extra confirmations.
NetworkSee block 363,731Source
15 Aug 2015
15 Aug 2015
Bitcoin XT is released
Mike Hearn and Gavin Andresen released Bitcoin XT, a version of Bitcoin's software that would raise the block size limit to 8 MB under BIP 101 once three quarters of recent blocks supported it. It never reached that level of support.
NetworkSource
17 Sept 2015
17 Sept 2015
US regulator finds bitcoin is a commodity
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), a US markets regulator, found for the first time that bitcoin and other virtual currencies are commodities.
PolicySource
7 Dec 2015
7 Dec 2015
SegWit becomes the plan for more capacity
As the Scaling Bitcoin workshop in Hong Kong ended, Gregory Maxwell set out his plan for raising Bitcoin's capacity on the developers' mailing list. He backed Segregated Witness, which Pieter Wuille had presented there as a soft fork that handles signatures separately and so "takes them outside the scope of the current blocksize limit".
Network · 22:02 UTCSource
14 Jan 2016
14 Jan 2016
The Lightning Network paper
Joseph Poon and Thaddeus Dryja's paper "The Bitcoin Lightning Network: Scalable Off-Chain Instant Payments" proposed a network of payment channels, which let two people pay each other many times while settling on the blockchain only occasionally.
MilestonesSource
23 Feb 2016
23 Feb 2016
Bitcoin Core 0.12 checks signatures with libsecp256k1
Bitcoin Core 0.12.0 began checking transaction signatures with libsecp256k1 instead of OpenSSL, through a change by Pieter Wuille. The release notes said signature checks became over five times faster on x86_64 processors, and new blocks took less than half as long to validate.
NetworkSource
2 May 2016
2 May 2016
Craig Wright claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto
Craig Wright publicly claimed to be Bitcoin's creator, and Gavin Andresen wrote the same day that he believed him. Other experts doubted the evidence; in 2024 a UK court ruled that Wright is not Satoshi.
PolicySource
4 Jul 2016
4 Jul 2016
Relative timelocks (CSV) activate
A soft fork bundling BIPs 68, 112 and 113 took effect at block 419,328. Its new CHECKSEQUENCEVERIFY rule lets coins be locked until a set time after they were received, a building block for payment channels such as the Lightning Network.
Network · 23:16 UTCSee block 419,328Source

2016 to 2020

Miners earned 12.5 BTC a block until block 630,000, on 11 May 2020.

9 Jul 2016
9 Jul 2016
The second halving
At block 420,000 the reward for mining a block fell from 25 to 12.5 bitcoin, the second halving.
Network · 16:46 UTCSee block 420,000Source
2 Aug 2016
2 Aug 2016
Bitfinex is hacked
Hackers stole 119,756 bitcoin, then worth about $72 million, from customer accounts at Bitfinex, a Hong Kong-based exchange, which halted trading. Bitfinex then spread the loss across all its customers, cutting every balance by about 36% and giving them tokens as credit for what they had lost.
MarketsSource
1 Apr 2017
1 Apr 2017
Japan's law on crypto exchanges takes effect
Japan's amended Payment Services Act came into force. From then on, only registered businesses could run a virtual currency exchange, a service that exchanges currencies such as bitcoin for money or for each other.
PolicySource
1 Aug 2017
1 Aug 2017
Bitcoin Cash splits off
Bitcoin split in two when nodes following new rules, under the name Bitcoin Cash, accepted a block larger than Bitcoin's 1 MB limit. Anyone holding bitcoin before the split held the same amount of Bitcoin Cash.
Network · 18:12 UTCSee block 478,558Source
1 Aug 2017
1 Aug 2017
The user-activated soft fork (BIP 148) takes effect
BIP 148, the "user-activated soft fork" (UASF), took effect at block 478,484: nodes running it would reject any block that did not signal support for SegWit. Miners were already signalling after a compromise proposal, BIP 91, so no split followed from it.
Network · 00:49 UTCSee block 478,484Source
9 Aug 2017
9 Aug 2017
SegWit locks in
SegWit locked in at block 479,808 after every one of the 2,016 blocks in the previous two-week signalling period had signalled support, more than the 95% needed. The upgrade took effect two weeks later, at block 481,824.
Network · 12:36 UTCSee block 479,808Source
24 Aug 2017
24 Aug 2017
SegWit activates
Segregated Witness (SegWit) took effect at block 481,824. It moves signatures into a separate part of the block, which fixes transaction malleability (the ability to change a transaction's ID before it confirms) and raises block capacity.
Network · 01:57 UTCSee block 481,824Source
8 Nov 2017
8 Nov 2017
SegWit2x is called off
The backers of SegWit2x, a planned hard fork (a rule change that older software rejects) to double Bitcoin's block size, called it off about a week before it was due, saying they had not built enough consensus.
NetworkSource
29 Nov 2017
29 Nov 2017
Bitcoin passes $10,000
Bitcoin rose above $10,000 for the first time on CoinDesk's Bitcoin Price Index.
MarketsSource
10 Dec 2017
10 Dec 2017
Bitcoin futures start trading
Cboe Futures Exchange began trading bitcoin futures, contracts to buy or sell bitcoin at a set price on a future date, settled in cash. CNBC called them the first bitcoin futures on an established exchange.
Markets · 23:00 UTCSource
17 Dec 2017
17 Dec 2017
Bitcoin peaks near $20,000
Bitcoin reached $19,783.21 on CoinDesk's Bitcoin Price Index, the high point of its 2017 rally.
MarketsSource
17 Dec 2017
17 Dec 2017
CME starts trading bitcoin futures
CME, the world's largest futures exchange, began trading bitcoin futures, a week after Cboe. Each contract covered five bitcoin and was settled in cash against a once-a-day bitcoin reference price, so no coins changed hands.
Markets · 23:00 UTCSource
23 Jan 2018
23 Jan 2018
Gregory Maxwell proposes Taproot
Gregory Maxwell proposed Taproot on the bitcoin-dev mailing list: a design that lets coins with complex spending conditions, when everyone involved agrees, be spent in a way "indistinguishable from a normal one-party signature". It activated in November 2021.
Network · 00:30 UTCSourceWhat happened
15 Mar 2018
15 Mar 2018
Lightning comes to Bitcoin's main network
Elizabeth Stark's company Lightning Labs released lnd 0.4-beta, the first version of its Lightning Network software enabled to run on Bitcoin's main network with real money.
Milestones · 14:59 UTCSource
6 Apr 2018
6 Apr 2018
India's central bank cuts crypto off from banks
The Reserve Bank of India barred the banks and other firms it regulates from dealing in virtual currencies or serving anyone who does, and gave them three months to end existing relationships.
PolicySource
22 Jun 2018
22 Jun 2018
Mt. Gox moves from bankruptcy to civil rehabilitation
At the request of some creditors, the Tokyo District Court put Mt. Gox into civil rehabilitation, which stopped its bankruptcy. In bankruptcy, customers' claims to bitcoin would have been turned into money claims valued in 2014; in rehabilitation they stayed claims to bitcoin.
Policy · 08:00 UTCSourceWhat happened
18 Sept 2018
18 Sept 2018
Inflation bug fixed in Bitcoin Core
Bitcoin Core released version 0.16.3 to fix a bug (CVE-2018-17144) that could have let a miner create extra bitcoin by spending the same coins twice inside one block.
Network · Until 20 SeptSource
27 Sept 2018
27 Sept 2018
Blockstream's Liquid sidechain launches
Liquid, a sidechain run by Blockstream so that exchanges and other businesses can move bitcoin between each other quickly and confidentially, produced its first block, with 23 companies as members. Blockstream called it the first production Bitcoin sidechain.
Milestones · 01:29 UTCSource
31 Jan 2019
31 Jan 2019
QuadrigaCX seeks creditor protection
QuadrigaCX, one of Canada's largest crypto exchanges, asked a Nova Scotia court to halt lawsuits against it, saying it could not reach most customers' funds after its founder, Gerald Cotten, died in December 2018. A 2020 review by Ontario Securities Commission staff concluded that clients lost at least C$169 million, mostly through Cotten's fraud rather than coins locked away by his death.
Markets · Until 5 FebSource
15 Mar 2019
15 Mar 2019
Mark Karpelès is convicted of tampering with Mt. Gox's data
A Tokyo court found Mark Karpelès, who ran Mt. Gox, guilty of tampering with its data and acquitted him of embezzling from client accounts. It sentenced him to two and a half years in prison, suspended for four years. Japan's Supreme Court dismissed his last appeal on 27 January 2021, making the conviction final.
PolicySourceWhat happened
12 Mar 2020
12 Mar 2020
Black Thursday
Bitcoin fell nearly 39% in one day on CoinDesk's Bitcoin Price Index as markets sold off over the spread of the coronavirus.
Markets · Until 13 MarSourceWhat happened

2020 to 2024

Miners earned 6.25 BTC a block until block 840,000, on 20 April 2024.

11 May 2020
11 May 2020
The third halving
At block 630,000 the reward for mining a block fell from 12.5 to 6.25 bitcoin, the third halving.
Network · 19:23 UTCSee block 630,000Source
11 Aug 2020
11 Aug 2020
MicroStrategy buys bitcoin for its treasury
MicroStrategy, a Nasdaq-listed software company, said it had bought 21,454 bitcoins for about $250 million and made bitcoin its primary treasury reserve asset, the main asset in which it holds its spare cash.
MarketsSource
21 Oct 2020
21 Oct 2020
PayPal opens bitcoin buying to US customers
PayPal said its US customers could buy, hold and sell bitcoin and three other cryptocurrencies (Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin) in their PayPal accounts, with access rolling out over the following weeks. The service ran through Paxos Trust Company, a regulated crypto firm.
MilestonesSource
5 Nov 2020
5 Nov 2020
US files to forfeit 69,370 bitcoins taken from Silk Road
US prosecutors in San Francisco filed to forfeit 69,370 bitcoins seized two days earlier. They said a hacker they called "Individual X" had taken the coins from Silk Road in 2012 and 2013 and never spent them.
PolicySource
16 Dec 2020
16 Dec 2020
Bitcoin passes $20,000
Bitcoin rose above $20,000 for the first time on CoinDesk's Bitcoin Price Index during early US trading hours, and was trading above $21,000 by 8:48 a.m. New York time.
MarketsSource
8 Feb 2021
8 Feb 2021
Tesla discloses $1.5 billion in bitcoin
Tesla said in its annual report to the SEC (a 10-K) that it had invested $1.50 billion in bitcoin, and that it expected to start accepting bitcoin as payment for its products.
Markets · 12:27 UTCSource
16 Feb 2021
16 Feb 2021
Bitcoin passes $50,000
Bitcoin passed $50,000 for the first time during early New York trading, reaching a record $50,584.85 on CoinDesk's Bitcoin Price Index before slipping back.
MarketsSource
14 Apr 2021
14 Apr 2021
Coinbase lists on Nasdaq
Coinbase, a US cryptocurrency exchange, began trading on Nasdaq under the ticker COIN through a direct listing, in which existing shareholders sell shares on the market instead of the company running a traditional public offering.
MarketsSource
12 May 2021
12 May 2021
Tesla stops taking bitcoin
Elon Musk said on Twitter that Tesla would stop accepting bitcoin for car purchases, less than two months after it started, citing the growing use of fossil fuels, especially coal, to mine bitcoin. He said Tesla would keep the bitcoin it held and accept it again once mining moved to more sustainable energy.
Markets · 22:06 UTCSource
21 May 2021
21 May 2021
China's cabinet calls for a bitcoin mining crackdown
A State Council committee on financial stability, chaired by Vice Premier Liu He, called for a crackdown on bitcoin mining and trading.
PolicySource
9 Jun 2021
9 Jun 2021
El Salvador passes its Bitcoin Law
El Salvador's Legislative Assembly voted 62 of 84 to make bitcoin legal tender, the first country to do so. The vote came late on 8 June in El Salvador, which was early on 9 June in UTC; President Nayib Bukele posted the result just after midnight there. The US dollar stayed legal tender too.
PolicySource
12 Jun 2021
12 Jun 2021
Taproot locks in
Block 687,284 was the 1,815th in its two-week period to signal for Taproot, reaching the 90% needed under the "Speedy Trial" activation rules and locking in the upgrade. It took effect five months later, at block 709,632.
Network · 12:04 UTCSee block 687,284Source
3 Jul 2021
3 Jul 2021
Record fall in mining difficulty
Bitcoin's mining difficulty fell 27.9% at block 689,472, the largest downward adjustment in its history, after China's crackdown knocked about half of the network's mining power offline.
Network · 06:34 UTCSee block 689,472Source
7 Sept 2021
7 Sept 2021
Bitcoin becomes legal tender in El Salvador
El Salvador's Bitcoin Law came into force, making bitcoin legal tender, money that businesses must accept, alongside the US dollar. The government launched its Chivo wallet the same day.
PolicySource
24 Sept 2021
24 Sept 2021
China declares crypto trading illegal
China's central bank said all business involving cryptocurrencies, including trading and exchange services, is illegal financial activity, and that foreign exchanges serving people in mainland China are breaking the law.
PolicySource
9 Nov 2021
9 Nov 2021
Agents find James Zhong's stolen Silk Road bitcoins
Searching James Zhong's house in Gainesville, Georgia, US agents found about 50,491 bitcoins he had taken from Silk Road in 2012 by tricking its withdrawal system, held in an underground safe and on a small computer hidden in a popcorn tin. Zhong pleaded guilty to wire fraud and in April 2023 was sentenced to a year and a day in prison.
PolicySource
10 Nov 2021
10 Nov 2021
Bitcoin's November 2021 record
Bitcoin reached a record of about $68,950, according to CoinDesk, soon after US data showed consumer prices up 6.2% on a year earlier, the fastest rise since 1990.
MarketsSource
14 Nov 2021
14 Nov 2021
Taproot activates
The Taproot upgrade took effect at block 709,632. It added Schnorr signatures and a new kind of output that reveals less about complex spending conditions, making them cheaper and more private.
Network · 05:15 UTCSee block 709,632SourceWhat happened
21 Nov 2021
21 Nov 2021
Bukele announces Bitcoin City
On the night of 20 November, El Salvador time, President Nayib Bukele announced plans for a "Bitcoin City" near the Conchagua volcano, powered by its geothermal energy, with value-added tax as its only tax. He said a bond to fund it would be offered in 2022, entirely in bitcoin.
PolicySource
8 Feb 2022
8 Feb 2022
US seizes 94,000 bitcoin stolen from Bitfinex
The US Justice Department announced the arrest of Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan in Manhattan, charged with conspiring to launder bitcoin stolen from Bitfinex in 2016, and the seizure of more than 94,000 of the stolen coins, then worth over $3.6 billion. Both later pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering.
PolicySource
27 Apr 2022
27 Apr 2022
Central African Republic adopts bitcoin as legal tender
The Central African Republic's presidency said the country had adopted bitcoin as legal tender alongside the CFA franc, the second country to do so after El Salvador.
PolicySource
9 May 2022
9 May 2022
Terra's UST stablecoin collapses
TerraUSD (UST), a stablecoin meant to stay worth $1, lost its peg and collapsed within days, and its sister token LUNA fell to almost zero. UST relied on an algorithm linked to LUNA to hold its value, rather than reserves of cash or bonds.
Markets · Until 13 MaySource
13 Jun 2022
13 Jun 2022
Celsius freezes customer withdrawals
Celsius Network, one of the biggest crypto lenders, paused all withdrawals, swaps and transfers between customer accounts, citing "extreme market conditions". It said the pause would put it in a better position to honour withdrawals over time.
Markets · 01:59 UTCSource
27 Jun 2022
27 Jun 2022
Three Arrows Capital is ordered into liquidation
A British Virgin Islands court ordered Three Arrows Capital, a Singapore-based crypto hedge fund, into liquidation, a court-run winding-up in which appointed liquidators collect its assets to repay creditors, after falling crypto prices exposed a cash crisis. On 1 July its representatives asked a New York bankruptcy court to shield its US assets from creditors under Chapter 15, the US law for foreign insolvencies.
Markets · Until 1 JulSource
8 Nov 2022
8 Nov 2022
FTX halts withdrawals and files for bankruptcy
The crypto exchange FTX paused all customer withdrawals on 8 November and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Delaware on 11 November. Chapter 11 is the US process that shields a company from creditors while it reorganises or sells its assets.
Markets · Until 11 NovSourceWhat happened
17 Nov 2022
17 Nov 2022
El Salvador starts buying a bitcoin a day
Late on 16 November in El Salvador, President Nayib Bukele posted: "We are buying one #Bitcoin every day starting tomorrow."
Policy · 05:28 UTCSource
20 Jan 2023
20 Jan 2023
Ordinal inscriptions go live
Casey Rodarmor released ord 0.4.0 and announced that inscriptions, a way to attach data such as images to individual satoshis, were live on Bitcoin's main network.
MilestonesSource
3 Feb 2023
3 Feb 2023
Tulip Trading's claim against Bitcoin's developers is sent to trial
England's Court of Appeal let Tulip Trading, a company associated with Craig Wright, take its claim against Bitcoin's developers, among them Mara van der Laan, Pieter Wuille and Gregory Maxwell, to trial. Tulip argued that they owed it a duty to help recover bitcoin whose keys, it said, had been lost in a hack; the court found only that this raised "a serious issue to be tried". Tulip discontinued the claim on 16 April 2024, a month after the High Court ruled that Wright is not Satoshi.
PolicySource
13 Mar 2023
13 Mar 2023
A court stops Lightning Labs using the name Taro
A US federal judge in Northern California temporarily barred Lightning Labs from calling its protocol for creating assets on Bitcoin "Taro", finding that Tari Labs, maker of a protocol called Tari, was likely to succeed in its trademark claim. Lightning Labs renamed the protocol Taproot Assets, and the case was dismissed in August 2023 after a confidential settlement.
PolicySource
15 Jun 2023
15 Jun 2023
BlackRock files for a spot bitcoin ETF
BlackRock asked the US Securities and Exchange Commission to register shares in the iShares Bitcoin Trust, a proposed exchange-traded fund (ETF) that would hold bitcoin itself and trade on Nasdaq like a share. Coinbase was named to look after the trust's bitcoin.
MarketsSource
29 Jun 2023
29 Jun 2023
EU crypto rules (MiCA) enter into force
The EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), one set of rules for crypto issuers and service providers across the EU, entered into force. Most of it applied from 30 December 2024.
PolicySource
29 Aug 2023
29 Aug 2023
Court rules for Grayscale against the SEC
A US appeals court ruled that the SEC's rejection of Grayscale's plan to turn its bitcoin trust into a spot bitcoin ETF, a fund holding bitcoin itself, was "arbitrary and capricious", because the SEC had approved similar bitcoin futures funds without explaining the difference. The court cancelled the SEC's order.
PolicySource
18 Oct 2023
18 Oct 2023
Taproot Assets goes live on Bitcoin
Lightning Labs released an early version of Taproot Assets for Bitcoin's main network: a protocol for issuing other assets on the bitcoin blockchain, such as stablecoins, tokens meant to keep a steady value, usually one US dollar. It worked on-chain only, "with Lightning support coming soon".
MilestonesSource
21 Nov 2023
21 Nov 2023
Binance and its founder plead guilty in the US
Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange, pleaded guilty to breaking US anti-money-laundering and sanctions laws and to running an unlicensed money-transmitting business, and agreed to pay about $4.3 billion. Its founder, Changpeng Zhao, pleaded guilty to failing to keep an effective anti-money-laundering programme and stepped down as chief executive.
PolicySource
10 Jan 2024
10 Jan 2024
SEC approves the first US spot bitcoin ETFs
The US Securities and Exchange Commission approved 11 spot bitcoin exchange-traded products, funds that hold bitcoin and whose shares trade on stock exchanges, for listing on three US exchanges.
PolicySource
11 Jan 2024
11 Jan 2024
First US spot bitcoin ETFs trade
The first US spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), funds that hold bitcoin and trade on stock exchanges like shares, began trading, a day after the SEC approved them.
MarketsSourceWhat happened
5 Mar 2024
5 Mar 2024
Bitcoin passes its 2021 record
Bitcoin set its first record high since November 2021, rising above $69,000 on Coinbase.
MarketsSource
14 Mar 2024
14 Mar 2024
UK court rules Craig Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto
At the end of a trial brought by the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA), Mr Justice Mellor of England's High Court declared that Craig Wright is not the author of the Bitcoin whitepaper, is not the person who used the name Satoshi Nakamoto from 2008 to 2011, and did not create Bitcoin or write its first software. He said the evidence was overwhelming and gave his full written reasons on 20 May 2024, in which he wrote that, page for page, a witness statement by the Bitcoin developer Pieter Wuille "turned out to be the most significant document in this Trial".
PolicySource
16 Apr 2024
16 Apr 2024
Bitcoin Core 27.0 encrypts connections by default
Bitcoin Core 27.0 turned on BIP 324 by default, so two nodes that both support it encrypt the connection between them. BIP 324, co-written by Pieter Wuille, makes it harder for an eavesdropper to tell where a transaction came from.
NetworkSource

2024 to now

Miners earn 3.125 BTC a block until block 1,050,000, expected around July 2028.

20 Apr 2024
20 Apr 2024
The fourth halving
At block 840,000 the reward for mining a block fell from 6.25 to 3.125 bitcoin, the fourth halving.
Network · 00:09 UTCSee block 840,000Source
20 Apr 2024
20 Apr 2024
Runes tokens launch at the halving
Runes, Casey Rodarmor's system for creating and trading tokens on Bitcoin, went live at block 840,000, the fourth halving block. The rush to create the first tokens pushed the average transaction fee that day to a record $127.97.
Milestones · 00:09 UTCSee block 840,000Source
19 Jun 2024
19 Jun 2024
German state of Saxony sells about 50,000 bitcoins
The German state of Saxony sold about 49,858 bitcoins that a suspect in the Movie2k film-piracy case had handed to the authorities, raising about €2.64 billion. Prosecutors said the law required an emergency sale because bitcoin's price swings threatened the coins' value while the criminal case went on.
Markets · Until 12 JulSource
5 Jul 2024
5 Jul 2024
Mt. Gox starts repaying creditors in bitcoin
The trustee of Mt. Gox, the exchange that collapsed in 2014, said he had started repaying some of its creditors in bitcoin and bitcoin cash through designated crypto exchanges. Others were to be paid once their accounts and the exchanges' arrangements were confirmed.
MarketsSource
23 Jul 2024
23 Jul 2024
Taproot Assets come to the Lightning Network
Lightning Labs released a version of Taproot Assets that sends assets such as stablecoins over the Lightning Network. In the company's words, "assets route through bitcoin, serving as a global routing currency".
MilestonesSource
27 Jul 2024
27 Jul 2024
Trump promises a national bitcoin stockpile
Speaking at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville as the Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump said that if elected he would keep all the bitcoin the US government holds or acquires as "the core of the strategic national bitcoin stockpile". He also said he would fire Gary Gensler, chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, on his first day.
PolicySource
5 Dec 2024
5 Dec 2024
Bitcoin passes $100,000
Bitcoin passed $100,000 for the first time in the early hours of 5 December UTC, which was the evening of 4 December in the US.
MarketsSource
18 Dec 2024
18 Dec 2024
El Salvador agrees an IMF loan that scales back bitcoin
IMF staff and El Salvador's government reached a staff-level agreement on a 40-month loan of about $1.4 billion. Under it, accepting bitcoin would become voluntary for businesses, taxes would be paid only in US dollars, and the government's bitcoin dealings, purchases and part in the Chivo wallet would be cut back.
PolicySource
10 Jan 2025
10 Jan 2025
Pieter Wuille and Gregory Maxwell win the Finney Freedom Prize
The Human Rights Foundation and Hal Finney's family awarded the Finney Freedom Prize for 2012 to 2016, the era between Bitcoin's first two halvings, to the developers Pieter Wuille and Gregory Maxwell. The prize, 1 BTC and a physical award, goes to whoever did most for Bitcoin and human rights in each halving era.
MilestonesSource
22 Jan 2025
22 Jan 2025
Trump pardons Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht
President Trump announced that he had signed a "full and unconditional pardon" for Ross Ulbricht, who had been serving life in prison since 2015 for running the Silk Road online drug market. Silk Road buyers paid in bitcoin.
Policy · 00:12 UTCSource
29 Jan 2025
29 Jan 2025
El Salvador ends forced acceptance of bitcoin
El Salvador's Legislative Assembly amended the Bitcoin Law so businesses no longer have to accept bitcoin and taxes can no longer be paid in it. The change was part of a $1.4 billion loan deal with the IMF.
PolicySource
30 Jan 2025
30 Jan 2025
Tether announces USDT for Bitcoin and Lightning
Tether announced that it would bring USDT, its dollar stablecoin, to Bitcoin and the Lightning Network using Lightning Labs' Taproot Assets. It said USDT would work on both "once fully integrated".
MilestonesSource
26 Feb 2025
26 Feb 2025
IMF approves El Salvador's $1.4 billion loan
The IMF's Executive Board approved El Salvador's 40-month loan of about $1.4 billion. Its terms included making acceptance of bitcoin voluntary, limiting the government's bitcoin dealings and purchases, and barring public debt denominated in or tied to bitcoin.
PolicySource
6 Mar 2025
6 Mar 2025
US creates a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve
President Trump signed an executive order setting up a US Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, filled with bitcoin the government already owns through forfeiture, and a separate stockpile for other digital assets.
PolicySource
20 Jun 2025
20 Jun 2025
Texas creates a state bitcoin reserve
Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed SB 21, creating the Texas Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, run by the state comptroller and kept outside the state treasury. It took effect immediately.
PolicySource
6 Oct 2025
6 Oct 2025
Bitcoin's October 2025 record
Bitcoin reached a record above $126,000. CoinGecko records the all-time high as $126,080 at 10:57 UTC.
Markets · 10:57 UTCSource
8 Oct 2025
8 Oct 2025
UK lets retail investors buy crypto ETNs
The UK Financial Conduct Authority lifted its ban on selling crypto exchange-traded notes (ETNs), securities that track the price of a cryptocurrency such as bitcoin, to ordinary investors.
PolicySource
10 Oct 2025
10 Oct 2025
Bitcoin Core 30.0 lifts the OP_RETURN limit
Bitcoin Core 30.0 was released, raising the default limit on data in OP_RETURN outputs (unspendable outputs used to attach data to a transaction) from 83 bytes to 100,000 bytes, which in practice removes the cap.
NetworkSource
10 Oct 2025
10 Oct 2025
The biggest liquidation crash on record
About $19 billion of leveraged crypto trades were liquidated in 24 hours, the largest such event on record, after President Trump announced an extra 100% tariff on Chinese imports. Liquidations happen when exchanges forcibly close borrowed bets that have lost too much.
Markets · Until 11 OctSource
14 Oct 2025
14 Oct 2025
US files to seize 127,271 bitcoin, its largest forfeiture
US prosecutors filed to forfeit about 127,271 bitcoin, then worth about $15 billion, in what the Justice Department called the largest forfeiture action in its history. The bitcoin was already in US government custody.
PolicySource
29 Oct 2025
29 Oct 2025
Mining difficulty reaches a record
Mining difficulty, a measure of how hard it is to find a block, rose 6.3% at block 921,312 to a record of about 156 trillion. As of October 2026 it had not been higher.
Network · 10:14 UTCSee block 921,312Source
6 Nov 2025
6 Nov 2025
Samourai Wallet co-founder sentenced to five years
A US federal judge sentenced Keonne Rodriguez, co-founder of the Samourai Wallet bitcoin app, to five years in prison for conspiring to run an unlicensed money-transmitting business through its coin-mixing service, which pooled users' payments to hide where they came from. Co-founder William Hill was sentenced to four years on 19 November.
PolicySource
11 Nov 2025
11 Nov 2025
UK sentences Zhimin Qian in its record bitcoin seizure case
A London court sentenced Zhimin Qian to 11 years and 8 months in a money-laundering case tied to a Chinese investment fraud. Police had seized about 61,000 bitcoin from her, the largest cryptocurrency seizure in UK history, and in October 2026 the courts were still deciding who keeps it.
PolicySource
13 Nov 2025
13 Nov 2025
Czech central bank buys bitcoin
The Czech National Bank said it had bought digital assets for the first time in its history: a $1 million test portfolio of bitcoin, a dollar stablecoin and a tokenised deposit, held outside its official reserves.
PolicySource
20 Nov 2025
20 Nov 2025
Texas funds its bitcoin reserve, the first state to do so
Texas bought about $5 million of shares in BlackRock's spot bitcoin ETF (IBIT) for its new Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, the first time a US state put money into a bitcoin reserve.
PolicySource
2 Dec 2025
2 Dec 2025
Vanguard lets clients buy bitcoin ETFs
Vanguard, which had refused to offer spot bitcoin ETFs since they launched in January 2024, began letting its brokerage clients trade ETFs and mutual funds that mainly hold crypto, opening them to about 50 million customers.
MarketsSource
10 Jan 2026
10 Jan 2026
Andreas M. Antonopoulos wins the Finney Freedom Prize
The Human Rights Foundation and Hal Finney's family awarded the Finney Freedom Prize for 2016 to 2020 to Andreas M. Antonopoulos, for his work explaining Bitcoin to millions. He gave half of the 1 BTC prize to Creative Commons.
MilestonesSource
5 Feb 2026
5 Feb 2026
Bitcoin's biggest one-day fall since 2022
On mempool.space's price feed, bitcoin fell 13.9% during 5 February, from about $73,000 to $62,900, its biggest one-day fall since FTX collapsed in November 2022. On exchanges it touched $60,000 just after midnight UTC, less than half its October 2025 record.
MarketsSource
7 Feb 2026
7 Feb 2026
Largest mining difficulty drop since 2021
Mining difficulty fell 11.16% at block 935,424, the largest drop since China's mining ban in 2021, after a US winter storm and falling prices led miners to switch off machines. It rose 14.7% at the next adjustment, on 19 February.
Network · 13:56 UTCSee block 935,424Source
11 Feb 2026
11 Feb 2026
Quantum-resistance proposal BIP 360 is merged
BIP 360, a proposed new output type called Pay to Merkle Root (P2MR) that would not reveal public keys when coins are spent, was merged into the Bitcoin Improvement Proposals repository. It is meant as a first step towards protecting bitcoin from future quantum computers; merging records it for review and changes nothing on the network.
Network · 20:38 UTCSource
8 Apr 2026
8 Apr 2026
Morgan Stanley launches a spot bitcoin ETF
Morgan Stanley's own spot bitcoin ETF, MSBT, began trading with a 0.14% annual fee, which the bank called the lowest for any bitcoin fund at the time. It took in about $34 million on its first day.
MarketsSource
8 Apr 2026
8 Apr 2026
The New York Times names Adam Back as Satoshi; he denies it
The New York Times published an investigation by John Carreyrou arguing that Adam Back, the British cryptographer who invented hashcash, is Satoshi Nakamoto. Back answered on X the same morning: "i'm not satoshi".
Milestones · 04:00 UTCSource
19 Apr 2026
19 Apr 2026
Bitcoin Core 31.0 rebuilds the mempool
Bitcoin Core 31.0 was released with "cluster mempool", a rebuilt system for holding unconfirmed transactions that groups related ones and ranks them by the fees miners would earn. It also added an option to send your own transactions only over Tor or I2P, hiding your IP address.
NetworkSource
1 Jun 2026
1 Jun 2026
Strategy sells bitcoin for the first time since 2022
Strategy, which held about 844,000 bitcoin, disclosed that it had sold 32 of them in late May for about $2.5 million to pay dividends on its preferred shares, its first sale since December 2022. It sold another 3,588 bitcoin between 29 June and 5 July.
MarketsSource
25 Jun 2026
25 Jun 2026
Bitcoin falls to its lowest since 2024
Bitcoin fell to about $58,000 on 25 June and to the same level again on 30 June, its lowest since late 2024 and about 54% below its October 2025 record. US spot bitcoin ETFs had $4.5 billion of net outflows in June, their worst month since they launched in January 2024.
MarketsSource
15 Jul 2026
15 Jul 2026
Japan regulates crypto like stocks
Japan's parliament passed amendments that regulate crypto assets such as bitcoin as financial instruments, like stocks, rather than as a means of payment. They add insider-trading bans, clear a legal obstacle to spot bitcoin ETFs, and allow a flat 20% tax on crypto gains, down from up to 55%, from 2028.
PolicySource
30 Jul 2026
30 Jul 2026
Coldcard wallets drained through a seed bug
Attackers took about 594 bitcoin from about 500 Coldcard hardware wallets, using a firmware bug that made the devices' seeds (the secret words that back up a wallet) far easier to guess than intended. Galaxy Research later counted about 1,806 bitcoin taken across several waves.
NetworkSource
8 Aug 2026
8 Aug 2026
BIP-110 supporters split onto a minority chain
Nodes enforcing BIP-110, a proposed one-year soft fork (a tightening of the rules) to restrict non-financial data such as inscriptions, rejected block 961,632 because it did not signal support, and followed a rival block instead. Only about 2.5% of recent blocks had signalled for it, so the main chain kept going and the BIP-110 chain fell behind.
Network · 19:35 UTCSee block 961,632Source
15 Sept 2026
15 Sept 2026
US crypto market bill fails in the Senate
The US Senate voted 49-50 on a procedural motion to take up the Clarity Act, far short of the 60 votes needed to advance it. The bill would have set the first comprehensive federal rules for crypto markets, including making the CFTC the watchdog for crypto spot trading.
PolicySource
16 Oct 2026
16 Oct 2026
Mt. Gox repayment deadline moved to 2027
Mt. Gox's rehabilitation trustee, with the court's permission, moved the deadline for repaying the collapsed exchange's creditors from 31 October 2026 to 31 October 2027, because many creditors had still not completed the steps needed to be paid.
PolicySource

Ahead on the network

30 May 2027
30 May 2027
Block 1,000,000
Bitcoin's millionth block. Nothing changes in how Bitcoin works; it's a round number.
Network · EstimateBlock 1,000,000Source
7 Jul 2028
7 Jul 2028
Next halving
At block 1,050,000, the new bitcoin miners earn for each block halves from 3.125 to 1.5625 BTC.
Network · EstimateBlock 1,050,000

Every date ahead, in the calendar

Bitcoin's history.

2008 to 2012

bitcoin.org is registered

Satoshi emails Adam Back

Satoshi emails Wei Dai

Bitcoin v0.1 is released

Hal Finney tweets "Running bitcoin"

The first bitcoin transaction

Satoshi introduces Bitcoin on the P2P Foundation forum

The first bitcoin exchange rate

The Bitcoin forum opens

The Bitcoin Faucet opens

Mt. Gox opens as a bitcoin exchange

Satoshi calls Bitcoin an implementation of b-money and bit gold

The value overflow incident

The orange Bitcoin logo is posted

Chris Double's mining pool finds a block

Satoshi asks WikiLeaks not to use Bitcoin

Satoshi's last forum post

Slush's mining pool finds its first block

Gavin Andresen takes over running Bitcoin

Bitcoin reaches $1

Satoshi writes "I've moved on to other things"

WikiLeaks starts accepting bitcoin

A hacked Mt. Gox account crashes the price to a cent

Bitcoin 0.5.0 brings the Bitcoin-Qt window

Bitcoins stolen in the Linode break-in

Pay to script hash (P2SH) activates

The Bitcoin Foundation launches

2012 to 2016

The first halving

Bitcoin 0.8 keeps a set of unspent coins

The March 2013 chain split

US treats bitcoin exchanges as money transmitters

Gregory Maxwell describes CoinJoin

BIP 39 sets out recovery words

FBI shuts down Silk Road

Bitcoin passes $1,000

China bars banks from bitcoin business

The "HODL" post

Mt. Gox halts withdrawals

IRS says bitcoin is property for US tax

Mara van der Laan takes over Bitcoin Core

The Trezor hardware wallet launches

Hal Finney dies

The sidechains paper

Ross Ulbricht is sentenced to life in prison

New York's BitLicense takes effect

The July 2015 chain split

Bitcoin XT is released

US regulator finds bitcoin is a commodity

SegWit becomes the plan for more capacity

The Lightning Network paper

Bitcoin Core 0.12 checks signatures with libsecp256k1

Craig Wright claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto

Relative timelocks (CSV) activate

2016 to 2020

The second halving

Bitfinex is hacked

Japan's law on crypto exchanges takes effect

Bitcoin Cash splits off

The user-activated soft fork (BIP 148) takes effect

SegWit locks in

SegWit activates

SegWit2x is called off

Bitcoin passes $10,000

Bitcoin futures start trading

Bitcoin peaks near $20,000

CME starts trading bitcoin futures

Lightning comes to Bitcoin's main network

India's central bank cuts crypto off from banks

Inflation bug fixed in Bitcoin Core

Blockstream's Liquid sidechain launches

QuadrigaCX seeks creditor protection

2020 to 2024

The third halving

MicroStrategy buys bitcoin for its treasury

PayPal opens bitcoin buying to US customers

US files to forfeit 69,370 bitcoins taken from Silk Road

Bitcoin passes $20,000