The first Cryptocurrency – Bitcoin, was released in 2009 by a pseudonymous developer/s by the name of Satoshi Nakamoto.
The true identity of this person or group has never been confirmed.
Bitcoins ticker symbol is BTC (however, XBT is also used by some digital exchanges).
Price & Key Milestone History of Bitcoin (BTC)
Many will have heard stories of somebody paying for a couple pizzas around a decade ago with a large quantity of bitcoins, now called Bitcoin Pizza Day. Bitcoin has captured the imagination of many since 2009, even though the true identity of it’s founder, Satoshi Nakamoto, has never been confirmed.
Like all new and disruptive technologies, it has attracted both praise and scrutiny since its inception, however with mainstream adoption looking closer and closer as each year passes, it seems Cryptocurrency (including Bitcoin) is here to stay. The history of Bitcoin is fascinating from several aspects, including adoption by leading companies, halving dates and their impact, major bull and bear markets, and the rise of this most known Cryptocurrency.
Below is a Bitcoin timeline that tracks key moments in history, from its inception to today.
Bitcoin.org is registered. The domain was registered at Anonymous Speech, a site that still exists today and allows users to anonymously register domain names and now accepts Bitcoin.
The Bitcoin White paper, authored by Satoshi Nakamoto, titled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System was posted to a cryptography mailing list.
The paper details methods of using a Peer-to-peer network to generate what was described as “a system for electronic transactions without relying on trust”.
The first, real-world transaction using Bitcoins takes place when a Jacksonville, Florida programmer, Laszlo Hanyecz, paid 10,000 bitcoins for two pizzas.
The deal came about when Hanyecz posted on the BitcoinTalk Forum that he would give 10,000 bitcoins to anyone who brought him pizza. Someone in the UK took him up on it, ordered two pizzas from Papa John’s in Hanyecz’s area, paid $US25 for them, and got the 10,000 bitcoins in exchange.
At the time, Bitcoin was worth approximately 0.003 cents each. So the 10,000 BTC was theoretically worth about US$30.
The deal is legendary with the 22nd of May each year now known as Bitcoin Pizza Day.
The number of retailers accepting the cryptocurrency Bitcoin passes 100,000 as major companies now accepting Bitcoin payments include Dell, Microsoft, Twitch, Wikipedia, Expedia, Greenpeace and PayPal.
The Bitcoin world received an exciting surprise as it was announced that the Deloitte office in Toronto installed its very own Bitcoin automated teller machine (ATM).
The growth in the number of Bitcoin automated teller machines (ATMs) between March 2015 and September 2016 more than doubled.
In March 2015 there were 353 Bitcoin ATMs, which is a substantial number given Bitcoin had not gone mainstream at that time. By the end of September 2016, this number had increased by over 118% to 771 ATMs worldwide.
Bitcoin (BTC) experiences a massive bull market during 2017 with price ultimately reaching around US $19,600 per Bitcoin, over 1,900% increase in price since the 1st January 2017 and generating inevitable discussions of a “Bitcoin Bubble”.
Bitcoin (BTC) experiences a deep bear market throughout all of 2018 with price ultimately reaching a bear market low around US $3,222 per Bitcoin on 15th December 2018 (Source: CoinMarketCap).
This was a decrease in price by over 80% since the 17th December 2017 high, and this bear market earned the term “Crypto Winter”.
El Salvador (a country in Central America) makes history by becoming the first country to officially adopt Bitcoin as Legal tender.
President Nayib Bukele confirmed that 62 members of the legislature voted in favor of the bill, 19 opposed it and there were 3 abstentions.
This will be a major boost to El Salvador citizens as only 30% have access to financial services, and remittance money makes up approximately 22% of El Salvador’s GDP (so citizens will save significantly on remittance transfer fees). As Forbes states, this law is “ushering in a new era of global monetary inclusion“.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approve the listing and trading of the first spot Bitcoin Exchange-traded funds (ETF). Approval of 11 spot BTC ETFs is announced in SEC Release No. 34-99306 on the 10th January 2024.
