Genesis Block: Bitcoin's Historic Start

Genesis Block is the very first block in the blockchain; more precisely, we can say that it is not even the first, but the zero block. Any cryptocurrency begins to be mined from the zero block, that is, from the Genesis Block.

On January 3, 2009, someone under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto made history by posting the Genesis Block on the Sourceforge website (aka the primary block or being block - a block containing the first 50 BTC). Unlike any of the subsequent blocks, the first contained the following message: "Times, 3 January 2009. Chancellor considers second bank rescue program."

The Genesis Block is the common ancestor of all other BTC blocks, since each subsequent one is connected to the previous one. Nakamoto mined the primary block on a regular computer (as opposed to the specialized processors mining today) without any competition, since no one knew about its existence back then and BTC was worthless. At that moment, cryptocurrency was just an experiment.

It took a whole year before people started paying attention to the unique concept. It would be incredibly easy for today's miners to solve the blocks of that time, as BTC difficulty skyrocketed from 1 to 3510000000000 during this time.

The next block appeared only six days later, on January 9. This seems strange since the average block generation time on the network is 10 minutes. There are several theories on this matter: some believe that Nakamoto spent six days not on mining, but on checking the system and confirming the stability of its operation (and then changed the date), others are sure that he decided to repeat the biblical story, according to which God created the world for six days, and the seventh rested.