On Sunday, January 11, 2009, cryptography engineer Hal Finney typed three words on Twitter: "Running bitcoin." As concise as it could be, yet like a gunshot — this was the moment the second person in the world to run a Bitcoin node announced it to the world (of course, the first was Satoshi Nakamoto).

At that time, less than two months had passed since the release of the Bitcoin white paper. A few lines of code, an old computer, a belief: decentralization is not just empty talk.

The real story unfolded the next day. Hal received 10 bitcoins from Satoshi Nakamoto — the first real on-chain transfer in human history. This was not just laboratory data, but a living trust transfer: code can be trusted, and people can be trusted. At that moment, decentralization leapt from the white paper theory into the real network.

No one could predict that the ripples of this code would, 15 years later, create a trillion-dollar asset class.

Fast forward to January 11, 2024. On the same day, the US SEC approved the first Bitcoin spot ETFs, officially opening the gates for institutions.

Fifteen years ago marked the birth of the code; fifteen years later, it was the embrace of regulation — both "openings" happened on the same date. Sometimes history is arranged this way, paying tribute to the earliest believers through coincidence.

Today, we are discussing not just a technological milestone, but how those who believed before dawn ultimately changed the entire financial ecosystem of the world.