Bitcoin Anniversaries Calendar: The Dates Worth Marking Every Year

Bitcoin has three anniversaries that its community marks every year: 31 October (Whitepaper Day, the paper was published in 2008), 3 January (Genesis Day, the first block was mined in 2009) and 22 May (Bitcoin Pizza Day, the first famous purchase in 2010). Around them sit a handful of other dates worth knowing, from the first transaction on 12 January 2009 to the network upgrades and halvings that shaped Bitcoin later.

Today is 31 October, so the calendar starts here. Every date below has a source, and the on-chain ones can be checked on any public block explorer.

The calendar at a glance

Date	Anniversary	First year
31 October	Whitepaper Day	2008
3 January	Genesis Day (also marked as Proof of Keys day)	2009
9 January	First Bitcoin software release	2009
12 January	First Bitcoin transaction, Satoshi to Hal Finney	2009
22 May	Bitcoin Pizza Day	2010
18 August	bitcoin.org registered	2008
24 August	SegWit activated	2017
14 November	Taproot activated	2021
About every four years	Halving (no fixed date)	2012

The big three

31 October: Whitepaper Day

On 31 October 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto posted Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System to a cryptography mailing list. The nine-page paper described digital cash that works "without relying on trust," solving double-spending with a public chain of proof-of-work. Many Bitcoiners mark the day by rereading the paper, which is short enough to finish over coffee.

Read the story of the release in the Bitcoin Whitepaper anniversary, or go section by section in the Bitcoin Whitepaper explained.

Wear it: the MOOD Whitepaper T-shirt prints all nine pages across the shirt.

3 January: Genesis Day

On 3 January 2009, Satoshi mined block 0, the genesis block, and started the network. Inside it is a line of text: "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks," a real front-page headline from that day. It timestamps the block and is often read as a comment on the 2008 banking crisis. We unpack it in what the Genesis Block message means.

The same date doubles as Proof of Keys day. Its organisers describe it as an annual celebration of the genesis block in which holders withdraw their bitcoin from exchanges and other custodians to wallets they control, in the spirit of "not your keys, not your bitcoin."

Wear it: the MOOD Genesis T-shirt carries that exact headline on the chest.

22 May: Bitcoin Pizza Day

On 22 May 2010, Laszlo Hanyecz paid 10,000 BTC to forum user jercos for two Papa John's pizzas. The payment was confirmed in block 57,043, which the blockchain timestamps at 18:16 UTC that day. It's remembered as the first well-known real-world purchase with bitcoin, and every year people celebrate by, of course, ordering pizza. The full transaction details are in our Bitcoin Pizza Day post.

Wear it: the MOOD Pizza T-shirt has the transaction hash around the sleeve cuffs.

Other early dates

18 August: bitcoin.org is registered

The bitcoin.org domain was registered on 18 August 2008, the first public trace of the project, more than two months before the whitepaper.

9 January: the first release

Satoshi announced Bitcoin v0.1 on the cryptography mailing list on 8 January 2009 (UTC), and the first open-source client went up on SourceForge on 9 January 2009. Block 1 followed that day, six days after the genesis block.

12 January: the first transaction

Satoshi sent 10 BTC to Hal Finney, the first transaction from one person to another. It sits in block 170, timestamped 03:30 UTC on 12 January 2009. A day earlier, Finney had posted "Running bitcoin" on Twitter.

For everything that happened between these dates, see our Bitcoin history timeline for 2008 to 2010.

Later milestones

24 August: SegWit activates (2017)

Segregated Witness, a soft-fork upgrade that changed how transaction signatures are stored and paved the way for second-layer tools like the Lightning Network, activated on 24 August 2017 at block 481,824.

14 November: Taproot activates (2021)

Taproot, the upgrade that added Schnorr signatures and more flexible, more private spending conditions, activated at block 709,632. That block is timestamped 05:15 UTC on 14 November 2021.

The halvings (moving dates)

Every 210,000 blocks, the reward miners receive for a new block is cut in half. Because the trigger is a block height rather than a calendar date, halvings land on a different day each time:

Halving	Block	Date (UTC)	Reward after
1st	210,000	28 November 2012	25 BTC
2nd	420,000	9 July 2016	12.5 BTC
3rd	630,000	11 May 2020	6.25 BTC
4th	840,000	20 April 2024	3.125 BTC

The next halving comes at block 1,050,000, expected in 2028, when the reward drops to 1.5625 BTC. Nobody can name the exact day in advance, since it depends on how fast blocks are found.

How to mark the dates

• Read the source. On 31 October, read the whitepaper itself.
• Check the chain. On 3 January or 22 May, look up block 0 or block 57,043 on a public block explorer and see the history for yourself.
• Hold your own keys. 3 January is the traditional day to move coins off exchanges and test your backups.
• Wear the moment. Each of the big three has a MOOD shirt behind it, all on our Bitcoin T-shirts page. If you're buying for someone else, our Bitcoin gift ideas post helps you pick.