The Genesis block marks the start of Bitcoin
The Genesis Blok was simply the first block of the Bitcoin blockchain that was mined ( Gemined ). You could see it as block 1. Today this is still in the Bitcoin blockchain and will stay there forever as long as the Bitcoin blockchain code is turned. Every node in the Bitcoin network can view this, even if it is at the other end of the chain of hundreds of thousands of blocks long.
A block is a collection of transactions that is validated together. The transactions in a block are added to the chain in one go, which means the entire history of transactions with Bitcoin. Every blockchain has a Genesis block, just as every blockchain has a last block. The number of transactions in a Bitcoin block is variable, but nowadays it is generally between 1,000 and 2,500 transactions. The time blocks that are needed to be validated or "mined" are consistent around 10 minutes. This diagram is built into the software: if the blocks are mined too quickly, the difficulty mechanism is conceived, which is conceived to keep the network safe and to ensure that the mining process is competitive, automatically more complex, and vice versa.
The Genesis block therefore contains the first set of bitcoin transactions that had to be validated. In fact, there was only one transaction, namely the distribution of the 50 BTC remuneration for mining the block to a certain address. Miners are still rewarded today, although the reward has since fallen to 3.125 BTC per 10 minutes. In the case of the Genesis block, there was only one person who knew about Bitcoin: the elusive maker of the original Digital Asset, Satoshi Nakamoto. Satoshi (almost certainly a pseudonym) started the Genesis block on January 3, 2009. That was three months after he or she had published the Bitcoin Whitepaper on an online forum. Bitcoiners now call "Genesis Block Day" on January 3.
The first bitcoin block
Satoshi has specially made the Genesis Blok in a number of ways. To start with, the 50 BTC reward has been sent to an address for which it can never be recovered. On a technical level, the 50 BTC transaction was not registered as such in the same way as later transactions. That is why any attempt to spend those coins would fail. Satoshi has never commented on the reasons for that. In addition, Satoshi wrote a message that was linked to the block.
It was a heading from the British newspaper The Times:
The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on Brink of Second Bailout for Banks
Satoshi has never explained this, this can be guessed. One of Satoshi's goals when creating Bitcoin could have been to prevent people from having cash to hand over money to a bank as an alternative to storing money under their mattress. In 2009 the big recession was in full swing. You can assume that it is no coincidence that Satoshi chose that specific head to write in the Genesis block. This should be the start of the end of people who are so dependent on banks that the government had to save them with tax money from their own mistakes.
Whether Satoshi's remark was mainly aimed at banks or governments or both remains a subject of discussion among Bitcoin enthusiasts. It is also strange that the second Bitcoin block was only mined on January 9, six days after the first. This was because the algorithm that adjusts the difficulty of Mining was only activated after two weeks.
How are Bitcoin blocks different nowadays?
Bitcoin blocks have changed a lot since 2009. They contain thousands of transactions instead of one. They need 10 minutes to mine. Miners are rewarded with 3.125 BTC, after four "semi -detaches" of the reward, which take place almost four years according to a predetermined inflation schedule. They form an uninterrupted series, each specifically referring to the previous one, which goes all the way back to the Genesis Blok.
