Bitcoin Forum

How did the bitcoin or any crypto coin network start? I'm not talking about developing and compiling the actual software. How does the actual block chain get started?How is the first block of the block chain started? Is it simply created automatically by the first person to load and run the cryptocurrency's wallet?

Bitcoin was experimentally initiated by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008, with no central bank, official organization, etc. Is a kind of digital currency that can be traded with currencies of countries but not transferred to any third party service without the intermediary institution. In global markets, Bitcoin is symbolized as an alternative to the Dollar and the Euro ฿, the abbreviation is BTC.

thats graph rising of bitcoin

https://s.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2013/04/bitcoin.jpg

I know the history and what it is. I understand that the bitcoin network is essentually a bunch of self synchornizing ledgers. Anytime someone starts up a bitcoin wallet, it downloads the blockchain from the network, and then becomes another node in that network. My question is, who started the first node of the network, and how?

For a long time Satoshi had the only node in the network and was mining all the bitcoins. Then the transaction to Hal Finney happened  :).

Satoshi was the first node on the network. The first block, block 0, was mined by satoshi. This block, known as the genesis block, is hard coded into the software and cannot ever change.

Satoshi created the Bitcoin network. Originally your node would connect to an IRC channel and receive IP addresses to connect to. This behavior was also hard coded into the client. Nowadays we use DNS seeders, servers that respond to a DNS request with IP addresses of nodes that you can connect to. We also use hard coded seed nodes. The DNS seeders and seed nodes are all hard coded into the software and automatically used to find the IP addresses of nodes in order to connect to the network.

Satoshi started by mining the Genesis block (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Genesis_block) - https://btc.com/000000000019d6689c085ae165831e934ff763ae46a2a6c172b3f1b60a8ce26f

Interesting side aspect to what I could already read everywhere... but when you say "hard coded and cannot ever be changed" do you mean theoretically? What is "hard coded" as opposed to... "soft code"?

As I understand, yes, the blockchain in theory cannot be changed but this is not to say it is impossible.

I have tried to read up why, but I assume this is partly because it would require a re-writing for all the nodes and consensus to do so. Am I correct?

If, I am, would a consensus to change block genesis in theory reverse the fact of "cannot ever be changed"?

Hard coded means that a parameter is explicitly coded into the software and cannot be changed by a user. The only way to change it would be to get the source code and modify it yourself.

When I say that it cannot ever be changed, I mean that changing the genesis block would mean that you are no longer using Bitcoin. Furthermore, the user cannot ever change the genesis block themselves.

It is impossible to change the genesis block and still be using Bitcoin.

Yes.

Yes, and this would mean that Bitcoin is no longer immutable and IMO a lot of people would stop using it.

Thank you for this. This explains a lot. In terms of how this was implemented, did he just basically load up a bitcoin client, and a miner program, and then the first block mined automatically became the genesis block?

Satoshi wrote the first Bitcoin client. There weren't any to "load up", nor were there any miners. What satoshi had to do was modify the original Bitcoin client to mine a block with very specific parameters. He then took the raw data of the mined block and then hard coded the raw data into the first version of the client prior to release.

Yes, that is what I wanted to know! Thank you. I always wanted to know how the first link in the chain got started.

Once you completed the code, you need to establish a local network, say from two different IP addresses. Once connected, you can start to mine the coin from one or both computers. Then you publish the IP addresses and coin software (source and/or compiled client), people will start their own client and join your network, they will mine coins, etc. And by then you launched a coin.