On what date was Bitcoin’s white paper published to a cryptography mailing list?

Bitcoin’s white paper was published to a cryptography mailing list on 31 October 2008.

Satoshi Nakamoto announced the paper to the Cryptography mailing list hosted by metzdowd.com. Its title was “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System,” and it outlined electronic payments based on a distributed ledger and cryptographic proof rather than a central authority.

The publication preceded the launch of the Bitcoin software and network. The first Bitcoin block was created in January 2009, giving the proposal a functioning implementation several months after the paper appeared.

A common mix-up is to confuse the white paper’s publication date with the genesis block date. The white paper belongs to 2008, while the first block belongs to 2009; both dates are important milestones in Bitcoin’s history.