The Genesis block is the first block in the Bitcoin blockchain. Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, mined the Genesis block on January 3, 2009 and included that day’s Financial Times headline, “Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks” in the block as a statement of Bitcoin’s purpose: avoiding the inequity and corruption inherent in the fiat monetary system. The Genesis block is special in a few ways. Firstly, its previous hash, the part of the block which references the previous block, is empty. This is because there is no previous block to be referenced. Secondly, the first 50 BTC, created in the coinbase transaction of the Genesis block, is unspendable.
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