DeFi News Daily Official TheBitTimes.com

The Bitcoin price edged up 1% in the last 24 hours to trade at $96,529 as of 3:20 a.m. EST on a 44% pump in trading volume to $42 billion. This rise in the BTC price comes as Bitcoin celebrates the 16th anniversary of its Genesis Block on January 3, 2025, a cornerstone of the cryptocurrency revolution. Created by the enigmatic Satoshi Nakamoto, the Genesis Block was mined on January 3, 2009, introducing the first 50 Bitcoins and embedding the historic message: “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on the brink of second bailout for banks.” On this day in 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto mined the Bitcoin Genesis Block, also known as Block 0. A historic moment marking the beginning of Bitcoin. 🟠 pic.twitter.com/ORZJ25EXRY — Trezor (@Trezor) January 3, 2025 Interestingly, the second block wasn’t mined until six days later, fueling speculation that Satoshi may have echoed the six days of creation in the Book of Genesis. Over the years, Bitcoin has evolved signifi...

Len Sassaman, a famous cypherpunk who committed suicide in 2011, is, according to Polymarket, the most likely candidate to be unmasked as the real Satoshi Nakamoto by a new HBO documentary, due to air this coming Tuesday. Sassaman, a well-known privacy advocate and cryptography specialist, conducted research for Computer Security and Industrial Cryptography and co-founded an annual conference for software hackers.  A popular theory put forward by Evan Leung Hatch suggests that Sassaman may be Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator and that his suicide could be linked to Nakamoto’s final message posted two months beforehand. It read, “I’ve moved on to other things and probably won’t be around in the future.” Leung reasons that Nakamoto left “a slew of uncompleted Features ” and never touched his bitcoin (worth more than $60 billion today) before his abrupt disappearance. He also points to Sassaman’s work on PGP encryption and remailers, both of which he claims are key to Bitcoin’s developm...

Asset management titan BlackRock has become the third largest holder of Bitcoin (BTC), and is on track to become the top holder by late next year. BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) holds over 350,000 Bitcoins, the asset manager’s website shows. With the current price of the leading crypto, the dollar value of the fund’s holdings stands at more than $20.8 billion. Binance And Satoshi Nakamoto The Only BTC Holders Above BlackRock The top two holders of Bitcoin above BlackRock’s IBIT are the crypto exchange platform Binance and the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto. ”Didn’t realize US ETFs are on track to pass Satoshi in bitcoin held in October,” said Bloomberg Intelligence ETF analyst Eric Balchunas. “BlackRock alone is already #3 and on pace to be #1 late next year, and will likely stay there for a very long time.” Spot Bitcoin ETFs in the US collectively hold 909,700 BTC. Didn’t realize US ETFs are...