A Bitcoin genesis is a block whose coinbase carries a headline nobody could have written earlier. There are two of them.
— both derive from the same code path
| Bitcoin · 3 Jan 2009 | Bitcoin · 3 Aug 2026 | |
|---|---|---|
| genesis hash | 000000000019d6689c085ae165831e934ff763ae46a2a6c172b3f1b60a8ce26f | 00000000ad12f3ecd9b14e4276ac98936fb0d658f05dce95ad35d18fceee208a |
| coinbase | The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks | The Times 03/Aug/2026 Toll of schooling ‘straitjacket’ |
| block 0 time | 1231006505 2009-01-03 18:15:05 UTC | 1785781375 2026-08-03 18:22:55 UTC |
| block 0 nonce | 2083236893 | 33394338 |
| difficulty | 1 — nBits 0x1d00ffff | 1 — nBits 0x1d00ffff |
| subsidy | 50 coins | 50 units, no value assigned |
| network magic | f9 be b4 d9 | f0 0b a7 26 |
| the client | bitcoin.exe fbcac071… released January 2009 | the same source, rebuilt Bitcoin-v0.1.4, c3f15fc5… |
| gap to block 1 | 5.36 days | 28.2 hours |
| who released it | published under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto | published under the same pseudonym by a different party |
| is that identity provable? | No. No genesis-era key has ever produced a verifying signature. | Not by signature either — but the artifacts are hashed, bracketed and anchored. |
| artifact timestamps | the newspaper fixes the earliest date. Nothing fixes the latest. | the newspaper fixes the earliest. Bitcoin block 961652 fixes the latest. |
| executed-binary binding | none exists | PID + process start time, before and after each block |
| is it money? | yes, by convention | no. No premine, no sale, no market, no value assigned |
| which one is Bitcoin? | no factual answer — convention only | no factual answer — convention only |
It is not arguing that the 2026 chain is Bitcoin, and not arguing that the 2009 one is either. This laboratory’s position is that which live network “is” Bitcoin has no answer recoverable from the artifacts — it is fixed by convention, and convention is not evidence. That holds for both columns, which is why neither is ranked and both are simply called Bitcoin.
They are also not the same chain. Different genesis, different network magic, no shared history, no shared balances, and the units of one are not the units of the other. A node on either cannot speak to the other, and no configuration makes it.
The 2009 origin is better attested socially and worse attested evidentially. Fifteen years of network, market and usage stand behind it. What does not stand behind it is a signature: no genesis-era key has ever signed anything, so every identity claim about it is forensic, archival or adjudicated — never cryptographic. That ceiling is a property of the world, not a gap in anyone’s research.
The 2026 chain has none of the social weight and all of the paperwork. Every artifact is hashed into a sealed manifest, every mining session is bracketed by before-and-after captures sharing one process identity, and the release is anchored in Bitcoin block 961652 by proof-of-work that belongs to nobody here.
So it is not offered as a rival. It is a control. It shows what a completely documented Bitcoin origin looks like — and having one is what lets the gaps in the 2009 record be measured rather than merely regretted.
Being first is a fact. Being the Bitcoin is not. The January 2009 source and its genesis are the unique origin artifact — there is exactly one of them, and the 2026 chain re-realizes it rather than being it. That is chronology, and this page does not pretend otherwise: the origin compass returns “it runs the origin, it isn’t the origin” for the 2026 chain, and it is right to.
What does not follow is deference. Priority in time is not authority over meaning, and a chain with a market is not thereby better evidenced than a chain without one.
The genesis verifier derives either block from its ingredients, in your browser, offline, with no server — the same code path for both. Change one character of either headline and watch the hash break. That is the strongest form this comparison can take: not a claim that the two are alike, but the same instrument running on both and neither getting special treatment.
The verifiable timeline carries both eras on one evidence table. Six of its seven 2026 rows are graded PARTY-RELEASED — our own record of our own runs, the same grade Satoshi’s own releases get — exactly one reaches CHAIN, and one is marked NOT HELD against us.