Since the genesis block is hardcoded in the software, what likely happened is Satoshi generated it in advance, added it to the code, and then did a few more days of final testing prior to release. Block #1 on the other hand was mined after the initial announcement on the cryptography mailing list: http://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2009-January/... (about seven or eight hours after if I got my timezone conversions correct)
>becomes the dominant payment system in use throughout
>the world. Then the
>total value of the currency should be equal to the total value of all
>the wealth in the world. Current estimates of total worldwide household
>wealth that I have found range from $100 trillion to $300 trillion. With
>20 million coins, that gives each coin a value of about $10 million.
>So the possibility of generating coins today with a few cents of compute
>time may be quite a good bet, with a payoff of something like 100 million
>to 1! Even if the odds of Bitcoin succeeding to this degree are slim,
>are they really 100 million to one against? Something to think about...
First ever reply to Satoshi. Finney was a smart guy.