hi everyone this is charles hoskinson broadcasting live from warm sunny colorado today is january 3rd 2021 and it's a very special day and i wanted to make a video to celebrate a very special birthday uh back in january 3rd 2009 bitcoin was born the very first bitcoin block was mined and the bitcoin network turned on back in that day it was just a dream and a white paper and about a hundred thousand lines of c plus plus code give or take uh not very good code but at the end of the day it was workable enough to attract a lot of great minds from alfini to marty malmy and many others throughout the years and it grew from just a handful of adherents and radicals and crazy crypto anarchists to global movement that has changed the world in just 12 short years almost a trillion dollars of wealth has been created an industry has been created and millions of people hold and know of crypto and millions more are coming our industry has shaped regulation from securities regulation to money transmission regulation and everyone from the president of the united states to the head of the european bank uh to pretty much every world leader has spoken on the topic vilified the topic or lionized it bitcoin itself has been declared dead hundreds of times it's endured multiple crashes i remember the very early days when bitcoin went from a dollar to thirty dollars down to four dollars in less than 12 months and i remember huge variability in the hash rate and i remember a lot of blows the loss of my current the loss of gavin and dreyson the loss of hal finney from als the loss of the founder of bitcoin uh satoshi nakamoto and despite all of these things in the exchange failures and the many moments where bitcoin was at its weakest or at least it seemed that way the idea persisted like some sort of decentralized super meme that has permeated the very definition of finance and allowed us to abstract things in a way where we are looking for the financial stem cell instead of looking at assets says individual siloed things commodities currencies securities and so forth bitcoin inspired all of us to start thinking of assets as that one thing that can become many things it started inspiring us to be our own bank to talk about identity in different ways to talk about what is decentralization a definition our industry still has yet to converge on it also inspired numerous thousands of scientists throughout the world to write thousands of papers yielding hundreds of thousands of citations and these papers have covered every dimension of academic inquiry into our industry from arcane topics like the application of zero knowledge cryptography and multi-party computation to provocative uh topics such as the ring of gaijis which talks about the nefarious uses of smart contracts and everything in between it's truly astounding to see the intellectual horsepower and the growth of that horsepower this entire industry has been inspired to bring to you it's been the industry that's been the most meaningful upon my life and it allowed me to travel to more than 50 countries and meet thousands of people and listen to them and get their hopes and dreams and what they would like to see the world look like in 2050 and inspired me to have a mission to give billions of people who haven't had a shot an opportunity to find economic identity for themselves to start three companies invictus innovations the ethereum foundation and the one that i run today input output which is the most meaningful to my life because i can finally follow my mission uh unhindered and with hundreds of great people behind me and communities of 100 000 plus in the cardano ecosystem to help us get there yet i owe all of this as do most of us in this industry to bitcoin because it's what got me started and it's what inspired me to reach for the stars and actually do great things so on this day this birthday january 3rd 2020 bitcoin now 12 years old it's truly astounding that something's still in its pre-teens has changed the lives of so many people and the way that the world works and it's incredible to see that bitcoin is not only still around but it still possesses one of the strongest and most evangelistic communities it still challenges us to innovate and it still pushes the world forward and inspires the imaginations of both the young and the old alike and regardless of where people sit their personal philosophies their favorite coins the technologies they like the technologies they don't like one thing is undeniably true we all owe bitcoin a sense of gratitude for it bringing us to the table and giving us the resources we needed to participate in one of the most exciting global renaissances in the history of finance certainly we will never see this again in my lifetime perhaps yours too and so that alone was worth the price of admission and it's worth all of us to wish bitcoin a happy birthday so no matter where you are whether it's nighttime or daytime warm or sunny no matter the weather the circumstances i think you could all just take a moment and reflect upon how bitcoin impacted your life and the things that it will continue to do for the world as a whole a long time ago i mentioned a story about the first time i visited mongolia i had the great fortune to go to the gobi desert and i met a camel herder and after spending some time with him he asked me what i did through a translator and i answered i was a cryptocurrency entrepreneur and he said you mean something like bitcoin and i say exactly like bitcoin and a surprise that a man living in a gare in the middle of nowhere knew about my industry and then he replied i own a bitcoin my brother holds it i bought it last year in ulaanbaater so if a camel herder living in the desert in a tent can somehow find a way to acquire something like this it truly tells you where our industry has gone in its reach and it's still in its infancy so when we look to this birthday and the many more to come one thing is clear bitcoin is here to stay our industry's here to stay and our best days are certainly ahead of us so thank you all for being part of my family nuclear and extended and thank you all for giving our industry a chance to solidify itself to get strong roots and to teach people that the world can change if we come together and change it together so i look forward to seeing you the next january and the next january and the birthday wishes i hope will get slightly more grand especially after this pandemic recedes and we can travel again and see each other in person again but regardless of that it's a good day for everyone and it's a good day for bitcoin thank you so much especially to the bitcoin community which has held the faith for so long 12 years now and to the tireless entrepreneurs who came after who have carried that torch to new dimensions and new places happy birthday bitcoin may you always continue to be that bright star lighting the way for those who wish to wander cheers
