What Happened During The Month Of January In The History Of Crypto

Since the dawn of Bitcoin in late 2008, the crypto industry has grown to become a $2 trillion behemoth. Over the years there have been many historic occurrences that have been either noteworthy and worth celebrating or instrumental in the advancement of the wider market. Let’s take a look at the history of crypto during the month of January:

January 2009

January 2009 was the dawn of the crypto industry. On 3 January 2009, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, launched the Bitcoin network when he mined the very first block, also known as the Genesis Block. Just a few days later on 9 January 2009, the first Bitcoin client and open source wallet was launched and uploaded to SourceForge.

On 11 January 2009, early crypto pioneer Hal Finney made history when he posted the first tweet mentioning Bitcoin, simply posting “Running bitcoin.” A day later, on 12 January 2009, Finney was involved in another major milestone when the first Bitcoin transaction took place, Nakamoto sent Finney 10 BTC.

January 2011

In January 2011, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) made history when they became the first non-profit organisation to accept donations in Bitcoin on 20 January 2011. A few months later, when WikiLeaks did the same, the EFF would stop accepting donations in Bitcoin, waiting another 2 years before they accepting donations in Bitcoin again.

January 2016

Many consider Bitcoin Cash, launched in 2017, to be the first Bitcoin fork, however on 17 January 2016, Bitcoin Classic was the very first Bitcoin fork to launch. Despite eventually failing, it would inspire many other similar attempts to fork the Bitcoin network such as Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin SV and more.

January 2018

It’s not all about Bitcoin however as January 2018 saw Ethereum hit a major milestone when it’s market cap exceeded $100 billion for the first time on 6 January 2018, after the crypto bull run in late 2017 sent interest in Ethereum to new heights, cementing its place as the second largest project in the crypto space.

January 2021

After the most recent Bitcoin halving kickstarted a new bull run which has continued to this day, Bitcoin surpassed $30,000 for the first time on 2 January 2021, just five days later on 7 January 2021, Bitcoin would surpass $40,000 for the first time, surging over 30% in less than a week. That wasn’t all, on 26 January 2021, Solana hit a major milestone when it’s market cap exceeded $1 billion for the first time, Solana would spend most of 2021 moving up the ranks as one of the largest projects in the crypto market.

Overall, January has been an important month throughout the history of the crypto market as shown above, especially for Bitcoin, without which the crypto market likely never would have existed.