It’s been 12 years since the first Bitcoin was sent

Twelve years ago, on January 11, 2009, the first-ever Bitcoin transaction was performed; proving the viability of blockchain transactions. At the receiving end was Hal Finney, a computer scientist. Finney received ten bitcoins from Satoshi Nakamoto, the ‘man” behind the golden mask and Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator.

Finney’s ten bitcoins which was literally worthless then would be worth over $350,000 today.

The transfer came a week after Nakamoto began running the Bitcoin network on his PC. Finney is well known for his work in the advanced cryptographic system and is the first person to receive bitcoins in a transaction. A few people have even claimed that he is Nakamoto. Sadly, Finney succumbed to a rare disease in 2014 and we may never get to know the identity of the real Nakamoto.

Finney was undoubtedly one of the pioneers of Bitcoin. In a Bitcointalk forum post in 2009, he claimed to have mined some of the early blocks.

I mined block 70-something, and I was the recipient of the first bitcoin transaction when Satoshi sent ten coins to me as a test.

Beyond being the first person to ever tweet about Bitcoin, Finney was also one of the first persons to predict the price of Bitcoin. In a mail to Nakamoto, he predicted that each coin could eventually be worth $10 million.

Check our guide of the most promising crypto