From the Genesis Block to $100,000, the Evolution of the Bitcoin Network and Its Economic Foundation

Written by:CryptoVizArt, UkuriaOC, Glassnode

Compiled by: Felix, PANews

Key points:

• After 5,256 trading days, Bitcoin broke through the $100,000 mark for the first time on December 5, and its market value once exceeded $2 trillion.

• Miners have earned a total of $71.49 billion, reflecting the Bitcoin networkSafetySexual and economic incentives.

• The Bitcoin network processed a total of 1.12 billion transactions and settled $131.25 trillion in transfers. The entity-adjusted data can more clearly reflect real economic activities.

• The details of holdings of different groups show that Bitcoin holders are widely distributed, covering both retail investors and institutional holders.

This article explores the evolution of the Bitcoin network and its economic foundations, reviewing Bitcoin's journey from the genesis block to breaking the $100,000 mark.

Market expansion

CompareXiaobai NavigationBitcoin has been actively trading for 5,256 days, rising from a few cents to $100,000. This journey includes 72 positive monthly candlesticks (including December 2024) with an average increase of 37.4%, and 71 negative monthly candlesticks with an average decrease of -14.2%.

This reflects a fantastic balance between bull and bear markets, and a positive tilt during the most important periods of price appreciation.

As of December 5, a total of 19,791,952 BTC have been mined, accounting for 94.2% of the total 21 million. The market value of Bitcoin also briefly exceeded 2 trillion US dollars, surpassing the market value of silver (about 1.84 trillion US dollars).

During this period of market expansion, investors realized $1.27 trillion in profits and $592 billion in on-chain losses (based on the difference between buy and sell prices). This resulted in a cumulative net capital inflow (realized market capitalization) of $750 billion and highlights the enormous value that has flowed into the Bitcoin network over its lifetime.

Supply Distribution

Among the mined bitcoins, differentwalletThe distribution of population sizes is as follows:

• 0.001–0.01 BTC: 42,683 BTC (0.216%)

• 0.01–0.1 BTC: 271,641 BTC (1.373%)

• 0.1–1 BTC: 1,077,839 BTC (5.446%)

• 1–10 BTC: 2,093,845 BTC (10.581%)

• 10–100 BTC: 4,306,780 BTC (21.761%)

• 100–1,000 BTC: 4,342,868 BTC (21.935%)

• 1,000–10,000 BTC: 4,693,216 BTC (23.716%)

• 10,000–100,000 BTC: 2,309,654 BTC (11.671%)

• >100,000 BTC: 647,934 BTC (3.274%)

It is noteworthy that most of the giant whaleswallet(holding 1000+BTC) are all relatedexchangeEach of these large entities represents the collective ownership of thousands to millions of customers and shareholders.

值得注意的持仓包括在交易所持有的 180 万比特币（占供应量的 9.1%）和由美国 ETF 管理的 110 万比特币（占供应量的 5.6%）。此外，矿工（不包括 Patoshi）保留了 70 万比特币（占供应量的 3.5%），而美国政府财政部持有 18.7 万比特币（占供应量的 0.9%），反映了比特币在各个实体之间的广泛分布，还凸显了比特币托管日益制度化和集中化。（注释：最早有独立矿工挖出了大量比特币，CommunityThey believe that this miner is Satoshi Nakamoto and call this mining model Patoshi)

Network Evolution

Since the genesis block, a total of 873,304 blocks have been mined, with an average Bitcoin block generation time of 11.8 minutes. While the current average block interval is about 9.6 minutes due to an increase in hash rate, the early years saw a slow start because Satoshi overestimated the performance of laptop CPUs relative to the initial difficulty setting.

During the same period, the network difficulty increased dramatically.SafetyAs the network continues to grow in terms of both performance and computing power, after 418 difficulty adjustments (excluding periods without adjustments), the network difficulty has increased to 446,331,432,498,125,300,000,000.

The difficulty adjustment target for the Bitcoin Proof of Work (PoW) consensus is to mine a block approximately every 10 minutes, regardless of changes in the network hash rate. The mining difficulty is dynamically adjusted every 2016 blocks (approximately 2 weeks) to align with the target block time of 600 seconds.

When Bitcoin reached $100,000, the network hash rate soared from 128,185 hashes/second to 804,407,834,059,443,100,000 hashes/second. So far, miners have cumulatively calculated about 5.01 x 10^28 hashes. It is worth noting that the hashes calculated in 2024 account for 37% of the total hashes.

截至 12 月 5 日，矿工累计赚取了 714.9 亿美元，区块奖励的价值以区块开采当天为准。这笔收入包括通过铸造新币获得的 673.1 亿美元区块补贴和用户支付的 41.8 亿美元交易费。这仅占比特币 2 万亿美元市值峰值的 3.57%，反映了投入安全预算的巨大回报。

Bitcoin transaction volume has also seen a staggering increase. To date, the Bitcoin network has successfully processed 1.12 billion transactions (unfiltered), filtering out internal transfers, with a total of 840 million actual economic transactions.

The Bitcoin network has processed a total of $131.25 trillion in transactions, measured by the dollar value of transactions at the time of confirmation. After adjustment, the filtered transfer volume is $11.63 trillion, accounting for only 8.86% of the total.

This reflects that most transactions are economic in nature. However, the vast majority of volume transferred on-chain is likely associated with large exchanges and custodial wallet management.

in conclusion

The rise of Bitcoin to $100,000 not only represents a price milestone, but also demonstrates its extraordinary journey from a small corner of the Internet to an important global financial infrastructure. Since the genesis block, the Bitcoin network has grown by leaps and bounds, reaching a market value of $2 trillion, surpassing silver, and settling $131 trillion in trading volume through 1.12 billion transactions.

The network has cumulatively paid miners $71.49 billion in value, or just over 3% of its market valuation, to support its own input costs, reflecting an incredible return on input costs. With its hash rate near all-time highs and a highly dispersed holder base, Bitcoin is playing an increasingly important role on the world stage.

The article comes from the Internet:From the Genesis Block to $100,000, the Evolution of the Bitcoin Network and Its Economic Foundation

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