In the first months of Bitcoin, the notebook was kept by a handful of hobbyists. Anyone could download Satoshi's program, leave it running overnight on an ordinary home computer, and wake to find 50 new bitcoin — the reward for sealing a block.

They called it mining, because, like digging for gold, it took work and luck. But there were no shovels. The miners raced to find a single lucky number — and whoever found it first won the right to write the next page.

Soon the miners discovered that graphics cards, built for video games, could guess numbers far faster than ordinary processors. By late 2010 they had begun joining forces in mining pools, sharing the work and splitting the reward, so that even small miners got a steady slice.

Then, in early 2013, came the ASIC — a chip built to do nothing but mine bitcoin. Kitchen tables gave way to warehouses beside cheap rivers and windy plains. The puzzle grew harder as more miners joined, keeping blocks near their ten-minute rhythm.

Satoshi wrote a clock into the code. Every 210,000 blocks — roughly every four years — the reward for mining is cut in half. 50 bitcoin became 25 in November 2012, then 12.5 in 2016, 6.25 in 2020, and 3.125 on 20 April 2024.

Because of the halvings, new bitcoin arrive more and more slowly, and the last fraction will be mined around the year 2140. After that, miners will be paid only by the fees people attach to their payments.

The biggest marketplace of those early days had a curious name: Mt. Gox, short for Magic: The Gathering Online eXchange — its web address had first been meant for trading game cards. In 2010 it became a bitcoin exchange, and by 2013 it handled most of the world's bitcoin trades.

In February 2014, Mt. Gox stopped all withdrawals and filed for bankruptcy. About 850,000 bitcoin were missing, stolen over years through hacks nobody had noticed. Roughly 200,000 were later found; customers waited a decade, until 2024, for repayments to begin.

As Bitcoin grew, its blocks filled up and fees rose. From 2015 to 2017 a bitter quarrel raged: should the size of each block be raised? Bigger blocks meant cheaper payments — but a heavier notebook that fewer people could afford to keep.

In August 2017 the village split. Those who wanted bigger blocks left to form Bitcoin Cash on 1 August. Weeks later, Bitcoin itself adopted SegWit, an upgrade that squeezed more room out of each block without making it bigger. No king decided; the miners, developers and users each had their say.

To make small payments fast and nearly free, two researchers described the Lightning Network in 2015: a web of payment channels that settle between friends off the chain, and only write the final balance to the notebook. It began running on Bitcoin in 2018, and a cup of coffee could be paid for in a blink.

On 7 September 2021, El Salvador became the first country to make bitcoin legal tender, beside the US dollar. The experiment drew crowds of surfers, builders and critics. In 2025, under a deal with the IMF, the law was changed so that businesses no longer had to accept it — but the country kept its bitcoin in the treasury.