The bitcoin origin

[Rasskabak]

A few days ago a friend of mine, which is unfamilliar with computer science, cryptography and bitcoin at all asked me a question - "how was the first bitcoins created?".

It was easy to find on google - with the Origin Block.
However - what happened then? As I understand, new bitcoins are created every time a new block is created. And blocks are created with transactions. So where does the blocks came from, when there were no transactions? Or were there just 'empty blocks' with no transactions? If so, how often and when exactly were they created?

Thanks

[fildza]

That depend on your luck and your mining hardware

[Foxpup]

Every block contains a special transaction called a "generation" transaction, which is created by the miner and credits the miners address with coins produced out of "thin air". This is the only case where a transaction can credit an address without debiting another by the same amount, and there is a limit to how many coins the miner can give himself this way. That limit is the "block reward" (originally BTC50, currently BTC25, and decreasing by half every 4 years) plus the transaction fees of any other transactions the miner included in his block.

It is perfectly allowable for a block to contain absolutely no transactions other than the generation transaction (even if there are many other transactions waiting to be included), however the miner will not be able to collect any transaction fees in that case. The transaction fees give miners a financial incentive to include as many transactions as they can (assuming those transactions have transaction fees - miners have no incentive to include "free" transactions, which is why free transactions often take a very long time to be included in a block).

[Rasskabak]

So, there were the "0 block", then a few computers were calculating next blocks, and if one found a correct one it was added to the block chain (although it has no transactions in it) and it's owner got 50BTC. It continued for some time and then a guy bought pizza for 10k BTC. Is that correct? .

[macmn]

So, there were the "0 block", then a few computers were calculating next blocks, and if one found a correct one it was added to the block chain (although it has no transactions in it) and it's owner got 50BTC. It continued for some time and then a guy bought pizza for 10k BTC. Is that correct? .

From my moderate understanding, that is basically correct