Bitcoins <\/p>\n
Yes, it\u2019s now been 17 years since the first known Bitcoin transactio<\/a>n 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\u2026 and it still has a long way to go.<\/p>\n Hal Finney<\/a> 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:<\/p>\n We detailed the backstory to Hal Finney\u2019s early involvement with Bitcoin in our first-transaction piece last year<\/a>. According to the man himself, he began mining \u201caround Block 70-something\u201d. His 10-coin transaction with Satoshi came at Block #170,<\/a> meaning Finney likely already had quite a stash by that time (at least, by today\u2019s standards).<\/p>\n 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\u2019s Laszlo Hanyecz\u2019s\u2019 10,000 BTC payment<\/a> for two pizzas in 2010 (cheap at the time!), 144,336 BTC seized by the FBI from Ross Ulbricht<\/a>\u2018s laptop in 2013 (Ulbricht was pardoned, but didn\u2019t get a refund), and more recently on BTC, possible finger-slips that paid between $500,000 and $800,000 fees for single small transactions.<\/p>\n Many have used the OP_RETURN code to embed additional data permanently into Bitcoin transactions\u2014Bible verses, marriage and birth announcements, Rickrolls, seasonal greetings, ASCII art, and assorted other graffiti. These novelties inspired others to wonder if Bitcoin\u2019s ledger could be useful for something other than just sending money.<\/p>\n Suggesting such a thing is considered heresy in BTC\u2019s more fundamentalist small-blocker circles. As well as decrying the frivolous inclusion of OP_RETURN<\/a> text messages, they\u2019ve also threatened to blacklist BTC transactions containing Ordinals<\/a> token data, and turned Satoshi\u2019s temporary 1MB block-limit spam protection into their hill to die on.<\/p>\n In their crusade to make Bitcoin useless for anything other than digital cash transactions, they eventually made it pretty useless for digital cash transactions, too. The irony!\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Splitting the Bitcoin network into three<\/a>, ever-feuding \u201cvariants\u201d in 2017-18 hasn\u2019t solved BTC\u2019s scaling debate, and it still continues to this day. Thankfully, Satoshi\u2019s original Bitcoin protocol remains today as the BSV<\/a> network, and scaling is not BSV\u2019s problem. The 1MB limit is long gone, and 2025\u2019s release of the Teranode upgrade<\/a> now permits a million or more transactions per second (no matter what size they are).<\/p>\n For a few days in April 2025, BSV\u2019s 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\u2019s on-chain data records carry tokens, game data, business records, audio and video recordings, photos, social media posts, and more. There\u2019s no fretting about a few extra characters of text in OP_RETURN.<\/p>\n BSV\u2019s ledger can now record anything, as often as needed. That was how Bitcoin was supposed to be. It\u2019s a digital cash network<\/a> and \u201cinternet payment layer,\u201d sure, but with Teranode, it can be the entire global digital economy.<\/p>\n 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\u2019t scale. Just as Finney has become legendary for his initial leap of faith, so could anyone who decides to use today\u2019s true Bitcoin blockchain for something that finally makes everyone say \u201cwow.\u201d The infrastructure is in place, the tracks are polished, and the world is ready.<\/p>\n Watch: Teranode is the digital backbone of Bitcoin<\/p>\n