On January 3, 2009, a pivotal moment in the history of digital currency was born on a server in Helsinki, Finland. A mysterious technical genius known as Satoshi Nakamoto generated the first data block of the Bitcoin network—the Genesis Block.

Interestingly, Satoshi Nakamoto embedded the headline of the front page of The Times of the UK on that day in the note section of this block: "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks." (The Times, January 3, 2009, "Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks"). This was not just a timestamp record but also a silent declaration—a profound satire of the fragile global financial system at the time. Just over a month after the outbreak of the 2008 financial crisis, the world economy was still experiencing aftershocks.

According to the protocol rules he set, Satoshi Nakamoto received a reward of 50 bitcoins from the Genesis Block, marking the earliest 50 bitcoins in human history. From that moment, the decentralized Bitcoin network began to operate automatically. Every 10 minutes, a new data block was added to the ledger, and new bitcoins were issued out of thin air according to the rules.

This initial design included three core components: the technical framework of cryptographic digital currency, the data structure of the distributed ledger, and the operational mechanism of the decentralized network. Starting from that server in Helsinki, the Bitcoin network gradually expanded into a global network composed of tens of thousands of nodes, with each participant acting as a guardian of the ledger.