A genesis block is basically the first block of the Blockchain. Numero uno. Its the only block that doesn't have a block previous to it in the whole of the Blockchain. Whats interesting about the Genisis block is was originally counted as Block 1. However, its now counted as Block 0 in modern Bitcoin applications. If you own a node with the latest update then its likely known as Block 1.

The first 50 BTC block reward was sent to the address:1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SLmv7DivfNa. Unfortunatly for the owner of this address it could not be spent to a quirk in the Bitcoin code. Whether Satoshi did this on purpose is yet to be known and whether he owns the private key to this address is also unknown. However considering Satoshi likely tested his own project before anyone else he likely owns the private key to that address.

The interesting part about the genesis block is that another block didn't come until another 6 days after the first one was mined. This is not the case for modern day blocks and those that came after that second one. In modern blocks the time between blocks

What is also quite interesting about the Genisis block is that a hidden message was left which was only discovered several years after the genisis block was created. It is suspected that Satoshi himself left this message.

It read: "sknab roftuoliab dnoces fo knirb no rollecnahC 9002/naJ/30 semiT ehT”.

Complete gibberish right? Well someone eventually cracked it. However I have tried to do some research on who this was but I haven't yielded any results. The general consensus is that this message translated into:

“The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks”.

It took roughly 10 years for this to be unscrambled and made sense of with several experts said to be on the case. I'm unsure when the message was first discovered and when work commenced. As you can imagine this took a very long time but probably didn't take as long as 10 years. It probably went unnoticed for a few years.

What does this mean? Well The times is a newspaper for anyone that does not know and the title of the newspaper on the 3rd of January 2009 was "Chancellor on brink of second  bailout for banks"

Now was this something Satoshi knew about and was waiting for the day that the news broke out or was this merely by luck that this was the title and he was going to include the title of the newspaper anyway? We don't actually know what was going through Satoshi's mind when releasing Bitcoin and whether the Genesis block was released at a strategic time. What we do know is the title of the times was in fact placed into Bitcoins history forever.

What most people believe is its a political statement by Satoshi and that Bitcoin is meant to combat the control of the central banks and give control back to the people. Bitcoin is in fact its own public ledger which allows users to toss away banks and become responsible for their own money. Bitcoin is trust less. Everything is open source and can be verified by anyone. You do not have to rely on a third party as with banks and fiat currencies.  Therefore its not completely ridiculous to assume that Satoshi meant to release the Genesis block when financial crisis was striking and he planned to include this in the Genesis block all along as a political statement.

If you are a regular buyer of the times and was buying it at the time then you should go and try and see if you can dig it up in your attic or wherever you collect your newspapers. Only 5 have ever been verified to be complete copies. You might have a piece of Bitcoin history in your possession and you didn't even know it. I would think these are worth a lot to the right people too.

Any input on the political statement issued by Satoshi?