Bitcoin is the world’s most secure and most decentralized cryptocurrency — but its fair launch is perhaps one of the most poorly-understood aspects of its history and one of the things that makes it so decentralized and unique.
Many altcoins will typically use a launch mechanism called “premining,” which is the creation of a quantity of blockchain-based tokens or coins prior to a cryptocurrency being made public. This is common practice in the world of centralized venture capital projects and initial coin offerings (ICOs).
Bitcoin Had No Premine
Bitcoin’s launch was not premined, and its pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, orchestrated a carefully-planned release that was instrumental to bitcoin being seen as a commodity in the eyes of regulators. The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has even published a brochure on Bitcoin, which states that it is a regulated commodity.
On October 31, 2008, Nakamoto published the Bitcoin white paper on the cypherpunk mailing list. Two months later, on January 3, 2009, Nakamoto mined the genesis block of the Bitcoin network and set in motion a force that would forever change the world. On January 8, 2009, Nakamoto emailed the cypherpunk mailing list, announcing Bitcoin’s public release.
To the untrained eye, the genesis block may seem like a premine. However, the 50 bitcoin mined in the genesis block are unspendable due to how the genesis block is expressed in the code. There is no possible way for Nakamoto to make a profit from the genesis block.
BitMEX Research has published analysis on the early mining era of Bitcoin and concludes that while “someone” mined 700,000 coins, and many assume this was Nakamoto, it officially remains unproven that it was they who mined these coins. The individual who did mine this vast amount of bitcoin is popularly referred to as “Patoshi.” Patoshi didn’t even “fast mine” bitcoin — analysis of the Bitcoin network shows that Patoshi actually throttled down their miners and it…
