The first entry is always the pin's source. Overall confidence is a weighted average of how firmly each reference supports the start and end times used above; a reference counts half as much for every 180 days older than the newest.
Wikipedia's[2][3] History of bitcoin dates the posting plainly: "Later that year, on 31 October, a link to a paper authored by Satoshi Nakamoto titled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System was posted to a cryptography mailing list." The pin is that posting; the network itself began on 3 January 2009 with the genesis block.
Dates the white paper's posting on 31 October 2008, the registration of bitcoin.org[1] on 18 August 2008, the genesis block on 3 January 2009 with its 50-bitcoin reward and its embedded reference to a headline in The Times of that day, and the first transaction to Hal Finney on 12 January 2009.
Something missing or wrong? Say it in your own words: a link that backs this pin up, a different start or end date and why, or a fact it lacks or gets wrong. The AI checks it against this pin's sources, searches for better ones, and adds any page that backs you up. The pin's own sources still count most.