The original title: "Archaeology of the 15th Anniversary of the Bitcoin White Paper: How I Got the Bitcoin Airdrop in 2011?"

Original source: ZHIXIONG PAN, Chainfeeds

Editor's note: June 2011 was a very special time, coinciding with the theft of the famous exchange Mt. Gox, which drew the author's attention to Bitcoin. He recovered reference materials related to Bitcoin that had been saved on his computer more than a decade ago and recounted how he created the first Bitcoin wallet and received the airdrop.

Looking back at the whole process, it is likely that due to the theft of 25,000 BTC from Mt. Gox users, the technology media increased their attention to Bitcoin, and then I also paid attention to this event in the process and created the first Bitcoin wallet.

Google Reader & Dropbox: My Data Vault

You may have heard many stories about "buying some bitcoins in a certain year, but later losing the private key". Fortunately, I like to backup and archive data, so based on the previously archived data, I was able to restore the process of creating a bitcoin wallet and receiving bitcoins for the first time that year. I even found some articles about bitcoins that were reported by the media at that time, including technology media, Guokr.com, and CoolShell.

It's not that simple to reconstruct something that happened over a decade ago. After all, I've gone through many laptops in these years, and even if I have the habit of regularly backing up data, I may still lose a lot of it. Even backup media may not be reliable (such as hard drives and CDs, which also have a lifespan).

And this time, the data was mainly recovered through Google Reader and Dropbox. Google Reader is an RSS reader tool, and at that time, I mainly used it to subscribe to some technology media, design, and lifestyle blogs, etc. For high-quality content, I often use the bookmark function for easy reference later. Later, Google Reader stopped operating in July 2013, but they provided data export function, so I exported all my bookmarked content and stored it in Dropbox.

Previously, I never thought about the value of this data, but I didn't expect that it could still provide some clues when it was discovered more than a decade later.

Data Mining: Tracing the Footprints of Bitcoin News Reports

I retrieved all the data related to "BTC", "比特币", and "Bitcoin" from my personal Google Reader archive file. I found nearly 10 relevant articles and currently have access to 5 of them.

The earliest one: June 18, 2011

"Hackers have started stealing Bitcoin currency"

Two days later, there were two similar articles: June 20, 2011.

《Bitcoin Market Attacked Resulting in Rollback》

"The world is crazy because of Bitcoin, or is Bitcoin crazy itself?"

KuKe: August 11, 2011

CoolShell's Chen Hao (also known as Zuo Erduo Haozi, a technical expert who passed away unexpectedly in May of this year) mentioned Bitcoin and its forked project Namecoin in an article where he often criticized Bitcoin.

"Crazy Open Source Projects for Web Applications"

Guokr.com: December 2011

Guokr compiled and published an article from WIRED titled "The Rise and Fall of Bitcoin".

https://www.guokr.com/article/76729/ (Guokr's Chinese version translated by editors)

https://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/11/mf_bitcoin/ (English original)

Why create a Bitcoin wallet

Bitcoin had no trading value in 2011. At that time, some Bitcoin enthusiasts created various "faucet" websites to promote and expand the influence of Bitcoin. Curious users could receive a certain amount of Bitcoin (about 0.01 BTC) for free by completing simple tasks such as filling out a captcha on these websites.

So at that time, I was also searching and browsing some faucet websites, and successfully received 0.01 BTC. And because of my habit of backing up data, I have also saved the private key file of this Bitcoin wallet until now.

Later, when I dug up this file from the hard drive, found the public and private keys, and searched through the blockchain browser, I discovered that the time of receiving the faucet was exactly on June 18, 2011, which was the same day as the article I saved "Hackers have started stealing Bitcoin currency".

Actually, June 2011 was a very special time, coinciding with the theft of the famous exchange Mt. Gox.

On 13 June 2011, the Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange reported some BTC 25,000 (US$400,000 at the time) had been stolen from 478 accounts. (Wikipedia)

The article on cnbeta website also mentioned this event, so it is likely that the theft on June 13th increased the coverage of Bitcoin by the technology media, and therefore attracted more attention. Because of this negative event, I eventually created a Bitcoin wallet and received a Bitcoin "airdrop".

Ending

Although I hold the private key to this address, I still have nothing. Even if I still hold this 0.01 BTC, it's not much.

According to the blockchain explorer, the 0.01 BTC in my Bitcoin wallet was transferred out in November 2013. As for why it was transferred out and where it went, I haven't found any concrete clues yet. However, I do remember doing something back then, possibly switching wallets or transferring it to an exchange.

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