Happy birthday, Bitcoin: the Genesis Block was mined nine years ago today

There are, naturally, a range of birthdays quoted for Bitcoin.

You could go for 18 August 2008, when the domain name bitcoin.org was registered.

Alternatively, you could go for 31 October of the same year, when the legendarily mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto first posted his/her/their paper Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.

We prefer, however, to go for January 3 2009: the date when the Genesis Block was created, the first ever block to be mined on a blockchain.

Which means that today is Bitcoin’s, and by extension blockchain’s, ninth birthday. Happy birthday, world-changing technology!

What was going on in the world on January 3 2009?

First, the dark stuff. It was the day when Pat Hingle, the actor who played Commissioner Gordon in the Nineties Batman movies, sadly died; it was also the day Israel invaded the Gaza strip during their 2008–2009 conflict.

On happier ground, in the UK X Factor winner Alexandra Burke was at number one in the singles chart with her cover if Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah.’ In the US, and farther up the quality scale, the same position was occupied by ‘Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)’ by a now-obscure singer called Beyonce.

In the US, the number one movie was Marley & Me; in the UK, the top spot went to Yes Man.

Meanwhile, in the US, a promising young President-elect named Barack Obama was gearing up for his inauguration. Donald Trump, however, hadn’t even joined Twitter yet — he wouldn’t until March 2009.

Hardly anybody involved in these pivotal events, if at all, were likely aware of the world-changing event that had occurred.

We don’t know where blockchains, bitcoins, cryptocurrencies et al will be in another nine years — but it’s certain that their importance will be seen as vastly outweighing even Beyonce…