Famous Blocks

The genesis block — Bitcoin's origin point

Satoshi mined block #0 with a 50 BTC reward and embedded The Times headline in the coinbase.

The first block after genesis

Block #1 — six days after the genesis block, mining resumed.

Oldest block with a spent coinbase

Block #9 — its mining reward funded the first Bitcoin payment to Hal Finney.

First Bitcoin transaction between two people

Satoshi sent 10 BTC to Hal Finney in this block — proving peer-to-peer transfer worked.

Patoshi's last known mined block

The final block attributed to Satoshi's distinctive mining fingerprint.

The Bitcoin Pizza transaction block

Laszlo Hanyecz's 10,000 BTC pizza purchase — the most famous transaction in crypto history.

The value overflow bug block

A bug briefly created 184 billion BTC — resolved by a 5-hour emergency soft fork.

Block 100,000 — early network milestone

Bitcoin reached six figures in block height before its second birthday.

First WikiLeaks Bitcoin donation block

WikiLeaks began accepting BTC the same day — bypassing the banking blockade.

Mt. Gox moves 424,242 BTC on-chain

The exchange publicly proved it still controlled its cold storage.

Block 150,000 — pre-bubble era

Mined during Bitcoin's first major price rally toward $31.

First halving block

Block reward dropped from 50 BTC to 25 BTC — the first of four halvings.

Block 250,000 — ASIC era underway

Mined months after the first halving as ASICs replaced GPU farms.

FBI Silk Road seizure on-chain

144,336 BTC moved in 446 transactions of exactly 324 BTC each.

200,000 'lost' Mt. Gox bitcoins resurface

~180,000 BTC moved on-chain while the exchange was bankrupt — the community watched in real time.

CoinWallet spam attack begins

A deliberate flood of dust transactions kicked off the 2015 block size wars stress tests.

The 291 BTC fee mistake

A user accidentally paid 291 BTC in fees — worth $136,000 at the time.

Second halving block

Reward halved to 12.5 BTC. The halving investment thesis began gaining mainstream traction.

BIP 91 lock-in block

SegWit2x compromise locked in — paving the way for SegWit activation.

Bitcoin Cash fork block

The last block before the contentious BCH hard fork split the community.

First post-fork Bitcoin block

Bitcoin continued on this chain while BCH split away.

SegWit activation block

Segregated Witness activated, fixing transaction malleability and enabling Lightning Network.

Bitcoin Gold fork block

BTG forked here — changing PoW to Equihash to resist ASICs.

Block 500,000 — fee market comes alive

Over 3 BTC in fees — the mempool was on fire during the 2017 bull run.

First Lightning Network payment on mainnet

Laszlo Hanyecz's Lightning purchase — the pizza guy proves L2 works.

Third halving block

Reward halved to 6.25 BTC during the COVID recovery rally.

Block 666,666 — biblical OP_RETURN message

A miner embedded Romans 12:21 in the block's OP_RETURN data.

Taproot lock-in block

Miners signaled 90% support — Taproot activation became inevitable.

Block 700,000 milestone

Bitcoin passed 700,000 blocks with hashrate at all-time highs.

Taproot activation block

Bitcoin's most significant upgrade since SegWit — Schnorr signatures and improved privacy.

Ordinals launch day block

Mined the day Casey Rodarmor's Ordinals protocol went live on mainnet.

Ordinals fee spike block

Over 6.7 BTC in fees — inscriptions congested the mempool.

Block 800,000 milestone

Eight hundred thousand blocks of immutable history.

Paxos $500,000 fee mistake

19.8 BTC paid in fees to move 0.008 BTC — F2Pool later refunded it.

Record $3 million fee mistake

A user paid 83.65 BTC in fees to move 55.77 BTC — over 120,000× the normal rate.

Fourth halving and Runes launch block

Reward halved to 3.125 BTC. Runes protocol launched simultaneously.

Block 900,000 — post-halving era

Nine hundred thousand blocks into an monetary experiment that worked.