The Bitcoin transaction that changed everything—17 years on

Yes, it’s now been 17 years since the first known Bitcoin transaction between two people. On January 12, 2009, just a few days after the initial public software release, Satoshi Nakamoto sent 10 bitcoins to Hal Finney in a landmark test to prove the network worked. From that one transaction to a potential million transactions per second today, Bitcoin has come a long way… and it still has a long way to go.

Hal Finney was the first person, other than Satoshi, to express enthusiasm for Bitcoin, and possibly the first individual, other than Satoshi, to start a mining node on the brand-new Bitcoin network. Though Finney unfortunately passed away in 2014, his contribution is now an immutable part of Bitcoin lore, as is his famous two-word tweet:

We detailed the backstory to Hal Finney’s early involvement with Bitcoin in our first-transaction piece last year. According to the man himself, he began mining “around Block 70-something”. His 10-coin transaction with Satoshi came at Block #170, meaning Finney likely already had quite a stash by that time (at least, by today’s standards).

There have been many other notable transactions on the Bitcoin network over the years, with many related to large spends, crimes, or other notorious incidents. There’s Laszlo Hanyecz’s’ 10,000 BTC payment for two pizzas in 2010 (cheap at the time!), 144,336 BTC seized by the FBI from Ross Ulbricht‘s laptop in 2013 (Ulbricht was pardoned, but didn’t get a refund), and more recently on BTC, possible finger-slips that paid between $500,000 and $800,000 fees for single small transactions.

Many have used the OP_RETURN code to embed additional data permanently into Bitcoin transactions—Bible verses, marriage and birth announcements, Rickrolls, seasonal greetings, ASCII art, and assorted other graffiti. These novelties inspired others to wonder if Bitcoin’s ledger could be useful for something other than just sending money.

Splitting the Bitcoin network into three, ever-feuding “variants” in 2017-18 hasn’t solved BTC’s scaling debate, and it still continues to this day. Thankfully, Satoshi’s original Bitcoin protocol remains today as the BSV network, and scaling is not BSV’s problem. The 1MB limit is long gone, and 2025’s release of the Teranode upgrade now permits a million or more transactions per second (no matter what size they are).

For a few days in April 2025, BSV’s average transaction throughput topped 1,000 per second using the SV Node protocol. Those days were outliers, but they proved it could be done. BSV’s on-chain data records carry tokens, game data, business records, audio and video recordings, photos, social media posts, and more. There’s no fretting about a few extra characters of text in OP_RETURN.

BSV’s ledger can now record anything, as often as needed. That was how Bitcoin was supposed to be. It’s a digital cash network and “internet payment layer,” sure, but with Teranode, it can be the entire global digital economy.

Hal Finney was a believer when everyone else said Bitcoin could never work. The BSV world was a believer when everyone else said Bitcoin couldn’t scale. Just as Finney has become legendary for his initial leap of faith, so could anyone who decides to use today’s true Bitcoin blockchain for something that finally makes everyone say “wow.” The infrastructure is in place, the tracks are polished, and the world is ready.

Watch: Teranode is the digital backbone of Bitcoin