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13 min read bitcoin

The Annals of Bitcoin Twitter

Bitcoin has been discussed on Twitter since the first week of the network's operation. The following is my attempt to cover major points in Bitcoin history as told by tweets.
The Annals of Bitcoin Twitter

We begin, of course, at the beginning.

It didn't take Hal long to determine that Bitcoin's privacy was far from perfect.

Don't you wish you had picked up some of those free bitcoins from Gavin Andresen's faucet?

At one point, the Wikipedia entry for Bitcoin was deleted because it was not considered noteworthy enough.

Creation of the first mining pool

Early Economy

50,000 BTC for an ounce of gold; oh my!

Bitcoin hits parity with the US Dollar.

Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20210423083126/https://twitter.com/Dave_Parrish/status/35466982635601920

Mark Karpeles buys MTGOX from Jed McCaleb. Unfortunately the original tweet from @mtgox has since been deleted.

Don't laugh at Greg; 400% profit ain't bad.

Wikileaks ended up collecting over 4,000 BTC at this address.

Oddly enough, a week later the EFF stopped accepting BTC... for a while.

Mike Caldwell begins minting physical Casascius coins

Bad News Begins!

Bitcointalk user "Allinvain" has 25,000 BTC stolen

First bitcoin malware

The MtGox database was compromised and the user table was leaked, containing details of 60,000 usernames, email addresses and password hashes, some of which were overly simple to brute force passwords. Someone was able to access an admin account at MtGox and issue sell orders for hundreds of thousands of fake bitcoins, forcing the MtGox price down from $17.51 per bitcoin to $0.01.

MtGox announced that these trades would be reversed. Trading was halted at MtGox for 7 days (and also briefly at TradeHill and Britcoin while their security was reviewed).

Some of the users on the leaked MtGox database had used the same username at MyBitcoin and had their passwords hacked. About 600 of them had their balance stolen from their MyBitcoin accounts. One user lost over 2000 BTC.

Room77, a bar in Berlin, becomes the first brick & mortar business to accept BTC

P2Pool mines its first block.

Several months later, the Bitcoin forum was hacked.

The first Bitcoin conference

Source: https://archive.ph/VhStf

Bitcoin's first bubble pops as the exchange rate crashes from $33 to $3.

First European Bitcoin conference

First phishing scams?

Tradehill shuts down - it was the 2nd largest exchange, after MTGOX.

Nearly 50,000 BTC stolen after security breach at web host Linode.

Satoshi dice, a simple gambling platform, becomes responsible for over half the daily transaction volume on the blockchain.

The Bitcoin Foundation is formed

First Halving

Bitcoin ATMs Begin

The first officially operational ATM went live in November 2013

Accidental Hard Fork

A database compatibility issue caused an accidental hard fork of the blockchain which required manual coordination by developers and miners to reorganize the chain and bring everyone back into consensus.

Assassination Markets

Early Adopter Regrets Begin

HI MOM SEND BITCOIN

Tor On Board

CHINA!

The exchange rate had crashed from $1,100 to $700 :-)

Not For Long...

After seizing Silk Road, they ended up auctioning off the coins for cheap!

Krugman's Infamous Op-ed

Bitcoin Development Grows

Overstock Accepts Bitcoin

Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20140116185323/https://twitter.com/OverstockCEO/status/421754592427139072

Apple Bans Bitcoin App

Watch this Bitcoin Fanatic Shoot His iPhone After Apple Blacklists Blockchain
Infuriated by Apple’s Blockchain app ban, bitcoiners smashed their iPhones in a controversial show of community support.
CoinDeskPete Rizzo

Apple ended up reinstating the app several months later.

MTGOX Implodes

Source: https://archive.ph/O3M5C

Bitcoin Approved for US Political Donations

The Simpsons

Slaying the BearWhale

Someone put $9M worth of BTC up for sale and was keeping the price suppressed at $300. This user came forward several years later to explain their reasoning.

Bitcoin Bowl

Probably the biggest PR sponsorship ever.

Coinbase Pro Opens

Steganography

Unicode Support

Scaling Debate

Source: https://archive.ph/jOKIP

This spawned the "unfairly cheap" meme

The scaling debate had no clear lines; it pitted brother against brother, and employee against employer, CEO against CTO! Fun times...

BitGo is a weird company from Bitcoin

Bitcoin Sign Guy

Narrator: he didn't.

BTCPay Server is Born

SegWit2x / UASF

SegWit2X client had an off-by-one bug that caused the fork to fail

Bitshaming Andreas

A bitcoin booster got $1.5 million after being “bitshamed” for being poor
Andreas Antonopoulos received more than 150 bitcoins in donations after being mocked on Twitter by a man known as “Bitcoin Jesus.”
QuartzJoon Ian Wong

CFTC Chairman Approves

SEC Commissioner Dissents

The Lightning Torch

Originally dubbed the "Lightning Trust Chain," anonymous Bitcoiner "Hodlonaut" kicked off a test of the Lightning Network that gained a lot of attention.

We Are All Hodlonaut

First time a POTUS tweets about Bitcoin

Source: https://archive.ph/PypK3

What is Bitcoin?

Lightning Network takes off

We Don't Need Internet Where We're Going

Bitcoin hashtag added to twitter

Money printer goes brrrr

The Third Halving

Breaking BTCD

In late 2022 a bitcoin developer was playing around with pushing the limits of tapscript and unintentionally triggered a validation failure in the btcd library that caused lnd lightning nodes to stop syncing with the blockchain.

The Story Continues...

This list is far from complete and will need to be updated as new iconic moments occur. Please contact me if you come across any tweets you believe are worthy of being added!

Published by:

Jameson Lopp

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