Block zero is mined with a newspaper headline buried inside, and the coins are unspendable forever

JAN 03 2009 · 12:00

Video: Trustless | S1E2: "Let There Be Block" — The Genesis Block Date: 2009-01-03 · Type: bitcoin · Tags: genesis, block-zero, satoshi, proof-of-work, coinbase, the-times, financial-crisis, immutability The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks. Satoshi mined block zero on a single CPU and embedded a headline from that day's London Times into the coinbase parameter — a timestamp pegged not to the network but to the legacy banking world it was being built against. The choice of text was deliberate and precise: Francis Elliott's front-page story on Alistair Darling's second banking bailout, a dispatch from the world that made the paper necessary. Every subsequent block references this one in its ancestry, so the headline is present in the hash-chain of every Bitcoin transaction ever confirmed. The 50 BTC reward at address 1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SLmv7DivfNa is unspendable due to a quirk in how the genesis block was constructed — it was not included in the global unspent transaction output set in the normal way, so the coins cannot be moved. They are visible on every node and permanently immobile, a kind of foundational icon that accumulates small tribute payments from users who know what they're looking at. The address has received thousands of small donations over the years, all likewise frozen in context. A six-day gap separates block zero from block one, mined on January 9. The gap has never been explained. The most plausible interpretation — that Satoshi paused deliberately, perhaps waiting for the network software to be released publicly — is also the least interesting one. What the gap produced was a sense of originary stillness, a founding moment held apart from the noise that followed. The chain's historians have treated it as such ever since. Facts • Block hash: 000000000019d6689c085ae165831e934ff763ae46a2a6c172b3f1b60a8ce26f • Coinbase contains: 'The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks' • Reward address 1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SLmv7DivfNa; coins are unspendable due to genesis block construction • Six-day gap before block 1 was mined (January 9 2009); unexplained • The Times article was by Francis Elliott, the paper's economic editor • The address has received thousands of small tribute payments from subsequent users Primary Documents • Bitcoin Wiki: Genesis block — https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Genesis_block