Mining question, how did it start?

Question

bitcoin

To get bitcoin, you need to guess the hash, confirm the transaction and receive a reward. But how then did this scheme get started when not a single coin had yet been mined?
The same with ICO, when a project starts, you can buy a new currency (or get a bonus) and wait for its exchange rate to rise. That is, the question is where do the coins in the new currency come from, when it will not be possible to mine, because there are no coins and no transactions yet.

Answer 1

The zero or genesis block is hardwired into the algorithm, it exists immediately. It can be viewed https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Genesis_block. The first transaction was made from it and the reward 50 was transferred to the first Satoshi address. With ICO, it’s a completely different story, tokens are not coins, Tokens are the state of a variable program / smart contract and can be arbitrarily assigned / changed by the contract itself, and not at all the number of coins in the contract account. To provide tokens with coins, the owner of the contract buys / deposits coins to the account of the contract.

Answer 2

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%91%D0%B8%D1%82%D...