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Hello wonderful steemians, I hope you all are doing good, welcome to my homework post, after reading through the lecture by @awesononso and doing extra research I will be completing my homework below.
Question One
a)What is the Genesis Block
b)What are the Significance of the Genesis Block
c) Explore the Bitcoin Genesis Block and Indicate how many transactions so far and the number of Bitcoin.
To totally grasp the meaning and concept of the genesis block, we first have to understand and know what lead to the creation of the genesis block which is the cryptocurrency, they are digital currencies that run on a decentralized blockchain network used in the purchase of goods and services and they have a strong security system know as the cryptography that safe guards it’s information.
There are different types of cryptocurrency the first being the bitcoin, it’s first block mined by Satoshi Nakamoto on the 3rd of January 2009. Blocks are like ledgers but digital that stores every and all transactions on the network and once written it cannot be removed.
The Genesis Block refers to the first block mined by Satoshi Nakamoto, it is the block 0, the base block of the bitcoin chain and it is the prototype of all other blocks in the blockchain,it differs from every other block in the blockchain because it does not have a block before it. In a stack of building blocks, the genesis block is the beginning, the first that leads to the others. The first 50BTC transaction of the genesis block is non tradable and as such cannot be spent. Hidden in the genesis block is an encryption code that translates to;
“The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks."
source
The hidden message is also the headline of a newspaper and it has made a lot of people think that it is the bitcoin’s mission statement to be different from regular bank operations. Also, this date it’s the same as it’s creation date.
What are the Significance of the Genesis Block.
The Genesis Block holds many significance/ Importance, a few are as follows;
● A new era; The mining of the genesis block brought about a new era in the crypto digital banking world, it eliminated the need for a middle man and made it so that bitcoin cannot be bailed out
● A prototype ; The mining of the first bitcoin genesis block has lead to the creation of other blocks in Bitcoin to make a blockchain and other cryptocurrencies are now able to mine it’s own genesis block.
● The genesis block serves as a template for the creation and mining of other blocks after it to make up the blockchain.
● The genesis block acts as a digital storage for transactions carried out in the blockchain.
Explore the Bitcoin Genesis Block and Indicate how many transactions so far and the number of Bitcoins
To be able to explore the bitcoin genesis block , I go to my browser and search the blockchain.com explorer after which I type in the hash in the search box.
| Hash | 000000000019d6689c085ae165831e934ff763ae46a2a6c172b3f1b60a8ce26f |
|---|
Image from blockchain explorer
And then click on the BTC, as shown in the image below.
Image from blockchain explorer
When the page opens it shows a brief history of the genesis block including it’s creation time, the first amount of BTC and the number of transactions at the initial time.
Image from blockchain explorer
Image from blockchain explorer
Scrolling further, to block transactions and clicking on the address it displays the present number of transactions and bitcoin as seen below
Image from blockchain explorer
From the above image we have;
| No. Of Transactions | 3,078 |
|---|---|
| No. of Bitcoins | 68.52320417BTC |
| Total Sent | 0.00000000BTC |
| Estimated to be | $4,513,966.07 |
Conclusion
The mining of the bitcoin genesis block was a great breaking into a new era for the financial market, it’s success has brought about many other cryptocurrencies today. I greatly appreciate @awesononso for this wonderful lecture