Genesis block

Block 0 (the genesis block) is timestamped January 3, 2009, 18:15:05 UTC. Its coinbase contains the text "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks" — the front-page headline of that day's Times of London, which simultaneously proves the block was not created before that date and gestures at the banking-crisis context. The genesis block's 50 BTC reward is unspendable: Bitcoin Core hardcodes the block and never adds its coinbase output to the UTXO set.

Nuance: Whether the unspendable genesis coinbase was deliberate or an implementation quirk is not documented. The next block (height 1) was mined about six days later, another undocumented curiosity.

Common misstatements:

• "Bitcoin launched on January 9, 2009." — That is the v0.1 software release announcement date; the genesis block is January 3.
• "Satoshi mined 50 spendable BTC in the genesis block." — The output exists in the block but cannot be spent.
• Misquoting the headline (e.g., "Chancellor on the brink of a second bailout"). — The embedded text is exact: "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks."