Satoshi Nakamoto mines block 0 — the Bitcoin genesis block — embedding the headline "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks" as a permanent timestamp.

The SEC approves the first 11 spot Bitcoin ETFs in the United States simultaneously, opening direct BTC exposure to mainstream brokerage and retirement accounts.

Joseph Poon and Thaddeus Dryja release the Lightning Network whitepaper, proposing scalable, instant off-chain payments over a network of micropayment channels.

The Silk Road marketplace goes online, the first modern darknet market and an early proof of concept for Bitcoin's censorship resistance and pseudonymity.

Tesla discloses a $1.5 billion Bitcoin purchase and announces plans to accept BTC as payment — the largest corporate purchase at the time, and a catalyst for the corporate-treasury movement.

Bitcoin reaches $1.00 USD for the first time on Mt. Gox — the moment the abstract concept of digital money became tangible.

Bitcoin's total market cap surpasses $1 trillion, joining Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and gold in the trillion-dollar-asset club — eight years after crossing $1.

The number of unique Bitcoin addresses with a non-zero balance crosses 10,000 — a meaningful early threshold in the network's growth from a single node to a global network.

President Trump signs an executive order establishing a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, directing the US government to hold seized Bitcoin as a strategic national asset rather than selling it.

Adam Back proposes Hashcash to the Cypherpunks mailing list — a proof-of-work system to make email spam economically impractical. Its proof-of-work concept became Bitcoin's mining mechanism a decade later.

Japan's Payment Services Act comes into effect, officially recognizing Bitcoin as a legal method of payment — one of the first major economies to establish a clear legal framework for it.

TIME Magazine publishes one of the first mainstream media articles about Bitcoin, introducing it to millions of readers who had never heard of cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin's block reward halves again at block 840,000 — Satoshi's programmatic monetary policy continuing to execute exactly as designed, with no central authority required.

The Bitcoin network processes its one billionth transaction, 15 years, four months and two days after Satoshi mined the genesis block.

TerraUSD loses its dollar peg, triggering the collapse of UST and LUNA — nearly $45 billion erased in days, and a contagion that would later bring down Three Arrows Capital, Celsius and Voyager.

Bitcoin's block reward halves to 6.25 BTC at block 630,000, continuing the fixed, predictable supply schedule set out in the whitepaper.

Laszlo Hanyecz pays 10,000 BTC for two pizzas — the first known real-world Bitcoin transaction, and the moment Bitcoin proved it could function as an actual medium of exchange.

WikiLeaks begins accepting Bitcoin donations after being cut off by Visa, Mastercard and PayPal — one of Bitcoin's first real-world demonstrations of censorship resistance.

An attacker compromises an auditor's account on Mt. Gox and crashes the Bitcoin price to $0.01, executing thousands of buy orders at a penny before trading is halted and rolled back.

John McAfee is found dead in his Barcelona prison cell hours after a Spanish court approves his extradition. The antivirus pioneer had become one of Bitcoin's most colorful — and controversial — advocates.

Bitcoin's block reward halves to 12.5 BTC at block 420,000, the second scheduled test of the fixed supply curve.

MicroStrategy (now Strategy) announces a $250 million purchase of 21,454 BTC, kicking off the corporate Bitcoin-treasury era.

A critical bug creates 184 billion BTC in a single transaction. Satoshi patches it within hours and soft-forks the chain to remove it — the only time the 21 million cap was technically breached.

Satoshi Nakamoto registers Bitcoin.org via a privacy-focused registrar — over two months before the whitepaper's release, and the earliest known public timestamp of Bitcoin's inception.

Satoshi contacts Adam Back to confirm the correct citation for Back's Hashcash paper — the proof-of-work concept Bitcoin's mining mechanism is built on.

Bitcoin becomes legal tender in El Salvador — the first nation to adopt it as an official national currency.

The #bitcoin IRC channel is created, becoming one of the earliest real-time gathering places for the network's first developers and users.

The Swiss city of Lugano hosts its first Plan B Forum, embracing Bitcoin as de facto legal tender for city services and partnering with Tether on a $100M fund to attract Bitcoin businesses.

Satoshi Nakamoto releases the Bitcoin whitepaper to the cryptography mailing list — introducing a peer-to-peer electronic cash system with no trusted third party.

An anonymous artist known as "bitboy" shares the iconic orange-circle ₿ logo on the BitcoinTalk forum for free, releasing it into the public domain — one of the great open-source brand gifts.

FTX, the third-largest crypto exchange, files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after revelations that billions in customer funds had been funneled to Alameda Research.

Bitcoin crosses $100,000 for the first time — six figures, sixteen years after an anonymous whitepaper by a cypherpunk who called it "electronic cash."

Bitcoin crosses $1,000 for the first time on Mt. Gox, driven by surging Chinese demand and growing mainstream awareness — four figures, five years after the whitepaper.

Two milestones share this date five years apart: the first-ever halving (2012, block 210,000, reward cut from 50 to 25 BTC) and Bitcoin's first crossing of $10,000 (2017) — the supply schedule proving out, and the market catching up.

Satoshi Nakamoto posts a final, brief message about DoS-mitigation on the BitcoinTalk forum, then ceases all public communication forever — one of the most remarkable disappearances in technology history.