Searching for early transactions on the blockchain

[irukandji]

What would be the easiest or best way to search the block chain for in formation about the earliest transactions?

[1715241995]

1715241995

[1715241995]

1715241995

[1715241995]

1715241995

[1715241995]

1715241995

[NeuroticFish]

Two directions could be
* search on the net about the first bitcoin tx
* go by hand block by block on a block explorer like https://chain.so/block/BTC/1 and see which blocks have more than just the generated coins

Afaik the first tx was https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/transaction/f4184fc596403b9d638783cf57adfe4c75c605f6356fbc91338530e9831e9e16 and it's in block 170 ( https://chain.so/block/BTC/170 )

[NotATether]

You can always just go to Blockchair's explorer widget and change the blocks graph to sort generation time by "Descending". This is technically equivalent to getting the earliest transactions since only the blocks have timestamps, and it all lets you see the transaction IDs in each block.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Unfortunately the new blockchair explorer redesign is utterly awful when compared to the old one, but you can still get some useful information from it. For example, try this link:

https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/transactions?q=block_id(1..5000),is_coinbase(false)

This will list all transactions between blocks 1 and 5000 which are not Coinbase transactions (i.e. the transactions which create new coins as a reward for the block miner). There are 63 transactions in total. You can obviously adjust the numbers to expand or narrow your search as you require.

[irukandji]

Thank you everyone who replied.

[Pmalek]

It's awfully slow and a boring process, but as NeuroticFish said, if you don't mind checking it manually block by block, use this https://www.blockchain.com/btc/block/1. Just change the last digit to the next block number. I checked the first 20 and there are only block rewards in those.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Just change the last digit to the next block number. I checked the first 20 and there are only block rewards in those.

An unnecessary process. You can use the link I gave above and then order by ascending block number. The first non Coinbase transaction is in block 170. There is then a single transaction in blocks 181, 182, 183, 187, 221, 248, 496, 524, and 545. The first block with multiple transactions is 546. So feel free to jump to those block numbers and skip the endless clicking.