From public-key cryptography to spot ETFs and stablecoin law: 96 dated events, with the Thai ones in green. The picture is a chain: the bitcoin genesis block's hash, then each tile the double SHA-256 of the one before.
Before bitcoin
- Diffie-Hellman key exchange
Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman publish a way for two parties to agree on a shared secret over an open channel. The paper starts public-key cryptography, the basis of the key pairs that crypto wallets hold.[494]
- RSA public-key system
Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman describe RSA, a public-key system for encryption and digital signatures that rests on the difficulty of factoring large numbers.[495]
- Merkle's hash-tree signatures
Ralph Merkle files a US patent for digital signatures built from a tree of hashes, granted on 5 January 1982. Bitcoin blocks use a Merkle tree to summarise all their transactions in one hash.[496]
- Chaum's blind signatures
David Chaum presents blind signatures, which let a bank sign a digital coin without seeing it, so the coin can be spent without tracing it to the person who withdrew it.[497]
- Cypherpunks mailing list
Eric Hughes, Timothy C. May and John Gilmore start the Cypherpunks group in the San Francisco Bay Area and its mailing list, which has 700 subscribers by 1994. Many ideas behind Bitcoin are first argued there.[500]
- A Cypherpunk's Manifesto
Eric Hughes publishes A Cypherpunk's Manifesto, arguing that privacy in an open society needs anonymous transaction systems.[501]
- Bit gold
Nick Szabo writes up bit gold, a chain of proof-of-work puzzles whose solutions are time-stamped and owned through a registry. He first proposed it in 1998.[505]
Genesis
- Bitcoin Pizza Day
Laszlo Hanyecz pays 10,000 BTC for two pizzas, the first widely cited purchase of goods with bitcoin. He posts the offer on 18 May and confirms the trade on 22 May.[510]
Altcoins
- Litecoin
Charlie Lee announces Litecoin, 'a lite version of Bitcoin', one of the first coins built from Bitcoin's code.[511]
Genesis
- First halving
Block 210,000 cuts the new-coin reward per block from 50 BTC to 25 BTC. Halvings repeat every 210,000 blocks, about every four years.[512]
Altcoins
- Dogecoin
Dogecoin, a coin named after the 'doge' dog meme, is announced on Bitcointalk.[515]
Genesis
Altcoins
- Realcoin, later Tether
A Santa Monica startup announces Realcoin, a token meant to hold a steady value of one US dollar. It issues the first tokens on 6 October 2014 on the Bitcoin blockchain and renames itself Tether on 20 November 2014.[519]
- Second halving
Block 420,000 cuts the block reward from 25 BTC to 12.5 BTC.[524]
The ICO wave
- SEC report on The DAO
The US Securities and Exchange Commission finds that DAO tokens were securities, signalling that tokens sold in initial coin offerings (ICOs) can fall under securities law.[527]
- China bans ICOs
China's central bank bans ICO fundraising and orders platforms to refund investors.[531]
- CryptoKitties and the NFT standard
CryptoKitties launches on Ethereum using an early form of ERC-721, the standard for non-fungible tokens (NFTs), tokens that are each unique.[532]
- Bitcoin tops $20,000
At the height of the ICO boom bitcoin reaches $20,089 intraday on CoinMarketCap data, up from under $1,000 at the start of 2017.[5]
- Crypto winter bottom
Bitcoin falls to $3,191 (CoinMarketCap daily low), about 84% below its December 2017 high.[5]
DeFi and NFTs
- Third halving
Block 630,000 cuts the block reward from 12.5 BTC to 6.25 BTC.[543]
- MicroStrategy buys bitcoin
Software firm MicroStrategy (now Strategy) buys 21,454 BTC for $250 million and makes bitcoin its main treasury reserve asset, the start of company bitcoin treasuries.[546]
- 2021 bitcoin peak
Bitcoin reaches $68,789.63 intraday on CoinMarketCap data, the high of the 2020-2021 cycle.[5]
The crashes
- Thailand bars crypto as payment
Thailand's SEC bars licensed digital asset businesses from offering crypto as payment for goods and services from 1 April 2022; trading and holding stay legal. Thais' digital asset holdings stand at 114.5 billion baht, up from 9.6 billion baht two years earlier.[553]
- Zipmex freezes withdrawals
Zipmex, a Singapore-based exchange with a large Thai business, suspends withdrawals, citing $53 million of exposure to troubled partners Babel Finance and Celsius. Thai withdrawals resume late the same day except from one investment product.[489]
- The Merge
Ethereum switches from proof-of-work mining to proof of stake. Its energy use drops by an estimated 99.95%.[558]
- 2022 bitcoin low
Bitcoin falls to $15,599 (CoinMarketCap daily low), about 77% below its November 2021 high.[5]
Institutions
The crashes
- Binance pleads guilty
Binance pleads guilty to anti-money-laundering and sanctions violations and agrees to pay over $4 billion; founder Changpeng Zhao pleads guilty and steps down as CEO.[567]
Institutions
- US spot bitcoin ETFs approved
The SEC approves listing and trading of spot bitcoin exchange-traded products, with staff reviewing registration statements for 10 funds at once.[568]
- Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, convicted in November 2023, is sentenced to 25 years in prison.[569]
- Fourth halving
Block 840,000, mined at 00:09 UTC, cuts the block reward from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC.[570]
- Bitcoin passes $100,000
Bitcoin trades above $100,000 for the first time, reaching $103,900 on CoinMarketCap data.[5]
Now
- Thailand's crypto gains tax holiday
Thailand exempts individuals' capital gains on crypto sold through SEC-licensed Thai exchanges, brokers and dealers from 1 January 2025 to 31 December 2029 (Ministerial Regulation No. 399). Income from mining, staking and airdrops, and trades on foreign or unlicensed platforms, fall outside it.[573][574]
- US executive order on digital assets
An executive order creates the President's Working Group on Digital Asset Markets, gives it 180 days to propose a federal framework, and bars US agencies from creating a central bank digital currency (CBDC).[579]
- Bybit hack
Hackers take about $1.5 billion in ether from Dubai-based exchange Bybit, the largest crypto theft on record. The FBI attributes it to North Korea's 'TraderTraitor' group, also called Lazarus.[582]
- US Strategic Bitcoin Reserve
Executive Order 14233 sets up a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a Digital Asset Stockpile, filled with coins forfeited in criminal and civil cases, and states that reserve bitcoin 'shall not be sold'.[583]
- Circle goes public
Circle, issuer of USDC, lists on the New York Stock Exchange as CRCL after pricing 34 million shares at $31.[584]
- GENIUS Act signed
Trump signs the GENIUS Act (S. 1582), the first US federal law for payment stablecoins, after the Senate (68-30, 17 June) and House (308-122, 17 July) pass it. The act bars issuers from paying yield to holders. On 17 July the House also passes the CLARITY market-structure bill, 294-134.[585][9][586]
- TouristDigiPay
Thailand launches TouristDigiPay, a sandbox that lets foreign visitors convert crypto to baht through licensed firms and pay by e-wallet. Spending is capped at 50,000 baht a month at small vendors and 500,000 baht at vendors that complete merchant checks, for up to 18 months.[67]
- Record $19 billion liquidation
After Trump threatens an extra 100% tariff on Chinese goods, more than $19 billion of margin positions are force-closed and more than 1.6 million traders liquidated, the largest liquidation Coinglass has recorded. Bitcoin's range that day runs from $122,510 down to $104,582 (CoinMarketCap).[590][591][5]
- Changpeng Zhao pardoned
Trump pardons Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, who pleaded guilty in 2023 and served four months in prison in 2024.[594]
- First US spot Solana ETF
Bitwise's BSOL starts trading on the NYSE, the first US fund holding SOL directly, and it stakes its holdings.[595]
- Chen Zhi sent to China
Cambodia arrests Prince Group chairman Chen Zhi on 6 January with two associates and extradites him to China.[598]
- Quantum-resistant BIP-360 merged
BIP-360, Pay-to-Merkle-Root (P2MR), enters the Bitcoin BIPs repository as a draft. It proposes an optional new output type without Taproot's key-path spend, so coins in it are not exposed to a future quantum computer through a visible public key. It is a proposal, not an activated rule.[600][601]
- Google cuts quantum estimate for crypto keys
Google Quantum AI estimates that breaking the 256-bit elliptic-curve cryptography behind Bitcoin and Ethereum signatures needs fewer than 1,200-1,450 logical qubits, or fewer than 500,000 physical qubits running for a few minutes: about 20 times fewer physical qubits than earlier estimates.[604][605]
- Drift Protocol hack
Attackers drain $285 million from Drift, a Solana trading protocol, after a months-long operation that combines social engineering, oracle manipulation and a governance attack to take admin control. TRM Labs links it to North Korea.[606]
- Kelp DAO bridge exploit
An attacker forges a cross-chain message to Kelp DAO's LayerZero bridge and takes 116,500 rsETH, about $292 million and about 18% of the token's supply, stranding wrapped rsETH on 20+ chains.[609]
- MiCA transition ends
The EU's transitional period for crypto firms under MiCA ends. Firms without MiCA authorisation must stop serving EU clients; ESMA says a pending application does not count.[610]
- Bank of Thailand screens USDT trades
Bank of Thailand Governor Vitai Ratanakorn says the bank is screening abnormally large stablecoin trades, mainly Tether's USDT, as part of a crackdown on the grey economy, and passes findings to the SEC.[614]
- Coldcard seed-phrase flaw drained
At least a dozen attackers drain over $130 million from Coldcard hardware wallets, exploiting a flaw from 2021 in Coinkite's code that made seed phrases predictable. Offline devices are among those drained.[615]
- SEC proposes Regulation Crypto Assets
The SEC proposes Regulation Crypto Assets: two offering exemptions, capped at $5 million over four years and $75 million per 12 months, plus a safe harbor for when a token sold under an investment contract leaves SEC oversight.[616]
- Biggest bitcoin rally since 2023
Bitcoin gains more than 20% in three days, its largest three-day rise since 2023, as about $2.7 billion of short positions are liquidated; spot bitcoin ETFs take in about $1.6 billion the week before. reported[617]
- Thai SEC proposes stablecoin transfer cap
The Thai SEC board approves consultation principles for stablecoins: transfers through licensed firms only to or from the customer's own verified wallets, and a cap of 5 million baht per person, per operator, per day each way. Comments close 25 September 2026. reported[13]
- CLARITY Act fails in the Senate
A Senate cloture vote on the CLARITY market-structure bill fails 49-50, short of the 60 needed; the dispute is over ethics limits on officials' crypto business ties. The bill passed the House 294-134 in July 2025 and the Senate Banking Committee 15-9 on 14 May 2026.[8][9]