What is a Genesis Block?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, we explain in simple terms what a Genesis Block is.

A Genesis block is the first block to exist in a blockchain. But let’s take a step back and revisit the concept of blocks to fully understand what that actually means.

Think of a blockchain as nothing more than a long history of financial transactions, saved indestructibly on many computers at the same time.

If you know the history of who sent whom how much, you can easily determine what is in each person’s wallet. It’s like a family tree: History is represented by generations – parents have kids, and kids have grandkids. If you know that Peter is Christian’s son, and Audrey is Christian’s daughter, you can determine that Christian has two kids.

But back to transactions now! Blocks are groups of those transaction records, and they simply exist to make it easier for computers to process many of them at the same time.

A Genesis block gets its name from the biblical story of God creating the world out of nothing. That’s kind of what is happening with crypto too: Someone just decides to start somewhere - for example 50 Bitcoins. It’s an arbitrary starting point, and the amount is set by the inventor of that blockchain. Everything after then is up to the users of the blockchain.

There you have it. All history has to start somewhere, including that of blockchains. And sometimes, there are some interesting nuggets to be found: Bitcoins Genesis block for example contained the headline of an article about banks being bailed out in the financial crisis of 2008. This led many to speculate it was invented as a currency that can’t be controlled by governments.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.