The genesis block and 6 days to second block

[southafricadude]

From what I understand, a bitcoin block takes an average of 10 minutes to be mined.

The genesis block or first on the bitcoin blockchain (block 0) was on January 3rd, 2009.
The second block ever mined, took 6 days to mine, not anything near 10 minutes.

Some people say that Satoshi did this on purpose, so that it was like the Bible's account of the world being created in 6 days.

Does anyone have any other thoughts or theories on the genesis block and the time taken for the subsequent second block

[pooya87]

it is fantastic how i still learn a new thing even after being in bitcoin for 5 years! thanks OP.

i did some search and it seems like this gap has nothing to do with mining and finding a block. in fact nobody was mining bitcoin in that gap because the code was not released yet.
in other words, Satoshi created the genesis block hence the blockchain on January 3rd with the timestamp and then released the code (Bitcoin v0.1.0) 6 days later on January 9th (https://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg10142.html) which is why the first mined block is on 9th instead of 3rd.

Yeah it was more or less the set difficulty and the rate of mining hash going on, he could have set the difficulty to be six days but I am guessing it was more or less just bad luck and initial difficulty needing to readjust.

difficulty readjusts AFTER certain number of blocks (2016) are found not after X amount of time passes. and the initial difficulty was the minimum possible value from the start.

[bitmover]

i did some search and it seems like this gap has nothing to do with mining and finding a block. in fact nobody was mining bitcoin in that gap because the code was not released yet.
in other words, Satoshi created the genesis block hence the blockchain on January 3rd with the timestamp and then released the code (Bitcoin v0.1.0) 6 days later on January 9th (https://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg10142.html) which is why the first mined block is on 9th instead of 3rd.

I didn't know about that. I thought the difficult was poorly adjusted.

Maybe satoshi saw a nice opportunity in January 3rd to launch the genesis block, as the times newspaper had a very interesting header, even though the code wasn't ready yet.

Satoshi inserted in the genesis block  an important message, which is the times header in that day. , governments decided to save banks with public money.

"“Chancellor on Brink of Second Bailout for Banks”.

difficulty readjusts AFTER certain number of blocks (2016) are found not after X amount of time passes. and the initial difficulty was the minimum possible value from the start.

This is right. After 2016 blocks the protocol readjusts the difficult for an average 10minures block, depending on the past hash rate.

[Tytanowy Janusz]

Thanks OP. I didn't know about that.

Maybe satoshi saw a nice opportunity in January 3rd to launch the genesis block, as the times newspaper had a very interesting header, even though the code wasn't ready yet.

I don't think that satoshi would launch the genesis block on not finished code and then finish it after 6 days. I'm closer to OP explanation that it was done on purpose (6 days - like creation of a world)

[odolvlobo]

Keep in mind that the timestamp is 2009-01-03 10:15, but that doesn't mean that the block was actually mined on January 3. It could have taken many days to mine the genesis block, and that may be why the release was delayed.

Also, there is minimum difficulty of 1. It took miners nearly a year to increase their hash rates high enough for the difficulty to start increasing. The average time between blocks was much longer than 10 minutes during that time.