Bitcoin Price: $95 – 97k (or) £77 – 79k
Fear & Greed Index: 74
Hashrate: 1 Zettahash, 1 ZH/s or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 hashes per second.
Reachable Nodes: 20,500
MSTR Price: $299 (pre-market)

On the 3rd January 2009 the first block of the bitcoin network was mined. This block was mined by Satoshi Nakamoto, and it contains something profound. Have a look at the genesis block below:

This first block of the blockchain contains a message. It reads:

‘The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.’

This is not trivial. It was the headline of The Times, a UK newspaper, the day that the Bitcoin network went live. It was also during a time when the financial system was on its knees. I am of course talking about the Great Financial Crash of ’07/’08.

Now, this little piece of history can never be forgotten. Actors and governments could try to eradicate this article from history. Every copy of it could be burned or destroyed, just like in Fahrenheight 451 or 1984, and every site containing it could be shutdown. After all, why shouldn’t they? What happened during that time was criminal, no two ways about it. And given the nature of our financial system today, it will happen again. We may even be on the cusp of it once more. The Bank of England has already come out and announced that any pension fund, hedge fund or insurance broker that requires bailed out could do so anonymously, with the BoE’s reasoning that this would limit the spread of panic in the system. That may be so, but the most fundamental reason for it is to protect the risk takers who require being bailed out by the public rather than face the consequence of their actions.

Just like in 2008.

But the Bitcoin network won’t let us forget because it cannot be changed. The Genesis Block will always be there – it is inscribed forever in the digital realm, and any node that contains the full bitcoin blockchain could at any point revive the network with this fundamental truth at its core if necessary. It’s really not an overstatement to say that Bitcoin has finally given us truth.

Satoshi inscribing the headline of this newspaper into the first block of the Bitcoin blockchain serves a profound reminder as to why Bitcoin was created in the first place. He gave us digital scarcity that is not reliant upon any issuer. After all of the damage caused by a fiat system, Satoshi went out of his way to create sound money – the soundest we have ever had. The Great Financial Crash saw the bankers bailed out by the taxpayer – the self same taxpayer who was losing their house, job and pension due to the reckless abandon of the those who were responsible for the calamity in the first place.

---

In other news, we have now hit 1 ZH/s for the first time. 1 Zettahash is 1 Sextillion, or 1 ^21. That’s 1 with 21 0s at the back of it.

21,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 hashes a second.

That’s just incredible.

It is the most powerful computer network in the world.

Nothing comes close to rivalling it.

Happy Birthday, Bitcoin.

Thank you, Satoshi.

And a Happy New Year to you all.

God bless.