The Genesis Block — Live Bitcoin's First Decade
January 2009. Twelve decisions from the real history — the pizza, the exchange, the landfill. What are you left holding? Free, no sign-up.
Twelve decisions. Every one of them costs you something.
How to play
- Twelve decisions, one at a time. There is no right answer — every choice buys one thing by spending another.
- Three things are tracked: the coins you hold, whether you still have the keys, and whether you stayed in the room.
- Where you end up depends on all three. The best ending needs all of them, and three in a thousand paths reach it.
How it works
It is January 2009 and you have just found the mailing list. Twelve decisions follow, each one somebody actually faced: whether to mine on a laptop, whether to buy the pizza, whether to leave the coins on an exchange, whether to dig through a landfill for a hard drive. Every choice buys one of three things — coins, security, or conviction — at the expense of another, so there is no free answer anywhere and no single habit that wins. Where you end up is decided by what you are left holding, and the best ending is genuinely hard to reach: it accounts for three in a thousand of all possible paths, which is known because every one of the 531,441 of them was walked. Runs on your device, nothing is sent anywhere, and there is nothing to sign up for.
A game about decisions, not investment advice, and not a prediction of anything. The history is real; the outcomes are a scoring system.
Frequently asked questions
Is any of this real history?
The situations are. Ten thousand coins really did buy two pizzas in May 2010; an exchange that handled most of the world's bitcoin trading really did collapse; someone really did throw away a hard drive and spend years trying to get a council to let him dig. What is invented is the scoring — the game has to end somewhere.
Is there a right answer?
No, and that is the design. No option is good on all three stats at once — that is checked in the tests, because if one were, it would be the obvious answer and the decision would stop being one. Some choices look free at the time; the bill arrives at the ending, and the five endings want different things from you.
Can I just click the same button every time?
You can, and it will get you the ordinary ending. The three options are shuffled into a different order on every run, so there is no consistent middle button to press, and the choices themselves are balanced so that always making the same kind of decision lands you in the same ordinary place. Both are asserted in the tests.
How hard is the best ending?
Three in a thousand of all possible paths reach it — measured by walking the entire decision space, all 531,441 of it, rather than by guessing. It needs coins, keys and conviction all at once, and most decisions will sell you one to buy another.