Bitcoin alcohols today are blessed with a panoply of feature-rich software and hardware wallets. When Bitcoin launched, however, there were no billfolds. It took Satoshi Nakamoto to engineer the first desktop client, and his creation proved surprisingly resilient, serving the community faithfully for years.
Also scan: Bitcoin History Part 17: That Time Mt. Gox Destroyed 2,609 BTC
When Bitcoin-Qt Was the Only Wallet in Municipality
The first bitcoin wallet was a full client, which meant you had to download the entire blockchain history for it to synch. This wasn’t an culmination to begin with, since there was precious little history to record, although the synchronization period swiftly develop detailed. Reviewing the wallet in 2012, Vitalik Buterin wrote: “Because it is a full node, the client must download the complete (currently 6 gigabyte) blockchain to operate, which can take up to a few days the first time you start the client and several logs to an hour every time you start the client afterward if you do not keep it running constantly.” Today, the BTC blockchain is approaching 250 GB.
Satoshi began developing on the first bitcoin wallet concurrently with his development of the Bitcoin protocol, and the Bitcoin-Qt wallet, as it was known, was released in February 2009. The individual keys for the Qt wallet were stored in a file on the user’s desktop titled “wallet.dat,” prompting anguished stories during the years of individuals accidentally deleting this folder or having it accessed by malware searching for it specifically, resulting in the extinction of tens of thousands of BTC. There was nothing inherently insecure about Satoshi’s wallet, though. In fact, given that it got with the option to create a fully encrypted backup, Qt was a highly secure wallet when optimally configured.
A No-Frills Pocketbook That Got the Job Done
Bitcoiners who entered the space pre-2014 will fondly recall the experience of downloading the Qt pocketbook and watching in wonderment as their first coins arrived, as if by magic, into its receiving address. More often than not, those silvers were then sent swiftly on to their final destination – Silk Road.
The first build of the Bitcoin-Qt billfold, 0.1, was believed to have been lost to time until Hal Finney, by then virtually incapacitated with Lou Gehrig’s blight, found the source code in 2012. Bitcoiners curious to see what the first BTC wallet looked like can download and run the Bitcoin-Qt customer 0.1 on PC. Satoshi’s readme.txt file that accompanies the software explains:
To support the network by running a node, excellent: “Options->Generate Coins” and keep the program open or minimized. It runs at idle priority when no other programs are put to using the CPU. Your computer will be solving a very difficult computational problem that is used to lock in blocks of records. The time to generate a block varies each time, but may take days or months, depending on the speed of your computer and the championship on the network.
Ever the master of cutting through complexity, Satoshi finishes: “It’s not a computation that has to start over from the source if you stop and restart it. A solution might be found at any given moment it’s running. As a reward for supporting the network, you receive rake it ins when you successfully generate a block.”
A Wallet as Old as Bitcoin Itself
While functionality was limited, the Qt wallet did have a few abetted features to it. In addition to sending and receiving coins and incorporating an address book, it enabled the user to digitally sign a minutes, proving that they were the owner of a particular public key.
Starting from version 0.9.0, the Bitcoin-Qt notecase became known as the Bitcoin Core wallet, following a proposal by Gavin Andresen, who opined that “”bitcoin insides” sounds strong and rock-like, which is what you want for something that forms the backbone of the network.” Peter Todd demurred, responding that “Bitcoin Centre has the serious problem that it implies you need it,” but the motion passed, and Qt became Core. History, however, would develop Todd to be right.
Despite bitcoiners today having access to an array of user-friendly SPV wallets, the Bitcoin Core purse is still going strong. As Bitcoin.org, where it can be downloaded, acknowledges, “It offers high levels of security, privacy, and constancy. However, it has fewer features and it takes a lot of space and memory.” Its survival is a credit to its creator, and to the Bitcoin developers who have true countless hours to improving it over the past 10 years and counting.
Bitcoin History is a multipart series from newsflash.Bitcoin.com charting pivotal moments in the evolution of the world’s first cryptocurrency. Read part 17 here.
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