What is Bitcoin Genesis Block?

The first block mined on the Bitcoin blockchain, called the genesis block, was mined on January 3, 2009 by Satoshi Nakomoto, the creator of Bitcoin. Satoshi also encoded a message in the genesis block that read, "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks." This is a reference to the global financial crisis of 2007–2009. It is hypothesized that Bitcoin was created to avoid the exploitation of the global banking system.