No CommentsToday’s post is completely a “feel good” post.
Meaning, you probably won’t learn anything new from it, but it will make you feel good. As Bitcoin prices continue to roller-coaster endlessly I thought this would be a good time to look back at where Bitcoin was when it just started out.
Using the Internet’s “Wayback machine”, Google search and various tools to explore Bitcoin’s past
So what I did in order to travel back in time is use the Wayback machine which is basically an Internet archive to see how several of the biggest Bitcoin websites looked when they first started out. I also used advanced Google and Twitter search tool to find out what where the earliest mentions of Bitcoin online. So let’s start out by comparing the biggest site of them all Bitcoin.org.
Bitcoin.org 31st January 2009
If you want to get a closer look y0u can just click here and browse the site as it was almost 5 years ago. This domain Bitcoin.org was registered on the 18th of August 2008 and the first siting of the site was about 5 month after that. Luckily the site today is a bit more accessible to the general public.
MtGox.com – what does MTGOX mean ?
Well I don’t know how many of you know this, but the domain MtGox.com was originally intended to be an online exchange for the card game “Magic: The Gathering”. That’s what MTGOX stands for – Magic The Gathering Online X-change. Here is an actual screen shot from May 2007 when it was still supposed to serve that purpose.
I wonder if they’re still waiting for that patent…
Around 4 years after on February 2011 I found the first screenshot of the MtGox that was used for Bitcoin exhcange. Below is how it looked in the early days:
Again you can click here to browse the full screenshot. Amazing how this website progressed in the last 3 years as Bitcoin became more and more popular.
Not too long ago people use to give away Bitcoins for free
Around 2010 a coder named Gavin Anderson bought $50 worth of Bitcoins (10,000 BTC) and started giving them away for free just for kicks. He called his site “Bitcoin Faucet”. This is how the site looked back then:
This was on July 3rd 2010 when he only had 750 BTC left (you can see it on the left side). A month after he reduced the amount given to 0.05BTC for each visitor – probably because he was running out of Bitcoins. On September 2012 the amount decreased to 0.02BTC. Unfortunately around October 2012 the faucet was closed….
First ever recorded Tweet about Bitcoin was on January 11th 2009
The user who tweeted it isn’t very active on Twitter. Here’s what he tweeted:
Very exciting I know…
Last but not least, some funny blog posts form the past
So to start off I’d like to invite you the “Bitcoin parity party” which was a celebration scheduled for when Bitcoin was to hit $1. This was on January 11th 2011.
But my favorite forum post is the one where someone gives the following educated advice:
Well, that’s enough nostalgia for today. Hope you enjoyed the ride. Maybe in 5 years someone will look on us today and make fun of the fact that we think that 1BTC = $1200 is crazy….I for one, certainly hope so.
