2012 · 4 recorded events
What happened in crypto in 2012? All 4 events on this timeline, including First Bitcoin Halving: 50 to 25 BTC — each dated, categorised and sourced.
This archive records four events for 2012, from Coinbase Founded in June to First Bitcoin Halving: 50 to 25 BTC on 28 November. Adoption and institutions accounts for the largest share of the year with two entries, ahead of network launches. The same year also brought OpenCoin Founded, XRP Ledger Goes Live and The Bitcoin Foundation Is Established. Each entry below carries its exact date, a short factual summary and a link to the source it was checked against.
By category, 2012 breaks down into two adoption and institutional entries, one network launch and one bitcoin halving.
Network Launches
Bitcoin Halvings
Adoption & Institutions
Every entry gives the date it happened, its category, a factual summary, and links to the original source and to the same entry in the full timeline.
Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam started Coinbase in Y Combinator's summer batch with a simple pitch: buy bitcoin with a bank account. Consumer-grade custody and compliance eventually made it the main on-ramp for US retail and, in 2021, the first crypto company on Nasdaq.
Modeled on the Linux Foundation, it funded core development and lobbied regulators after Satoshi's exit. Governance disputes and the 2014 arrest of vice-chairman Charlie Shrem drained its credibility, and by 2015 development funding had shifted to companies like Blockstream and Chaincode.
Chris Larsen and Jed McCaleb founded OpenCoin, later Ripple Labs, and launched a consensus ledger with 100 billion pre-created XRP aimed at bank settlement rather than mining. The pre-mined, company-controlled model made it the first major counter-design to Bitcoin — and the target of a landmark SEC case in 2020.
At block 210,000 the block subsidy dropped from 50 to 25 BTC, the first live test of Bitcoin's disinflationary schedule. Hash rate held, no chain split occurred, and the price rose from about $12 to over $1,000 in the following twelve months.
This archive keeps a page for every year from 2008 to 2026. The sparser pre-Bitcoin entries from 1979 onward live in the full timeline.
