Happy Birthday, Bitcoin
On January 3, 2009, the infamous and enigmatic Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto mined the first block. As payment for the genesis block, Nakamoto earned 50 BTC, which, given the token's worth today, is a sizable holding.
Due to Satoshi's failure to send the transaction from the genesis block to the global transaction database, his reward cannot be used. It's not obvious if this was done on purpose.
It was inevitable that a revolutionary asset like Bitcoin would eventually run across opposition and barriers. And it did, on multiple instances, particularly in the beginning. The price of bitcoin fell in a few particularly prominent instances, but its highs have continued to outweigh its lows. During those early years, the idea of the cryptocurrency's capacity to rebound strongly from negative markets started to take root.
In October 2009, a Finnish computer science student named Martti Malmi sold 5,050 BTC, giving each coin a value of $0.0009. This was the very first Bitcoin transaction.
In 2010, the now-famous Laszlo Hanyecz made one of the most remarkable early real-world transactions when he paid 10,000 BTC for two pizzas. That would be equivalent to almost $167.3 million at the current valuation. On May 22, Bitcoin Pizza Day, which celebrates the purchase, is observed by the crypto community.
It didn't take long for the price of Bitcoin to hit $1, which occurred in February 2011. Soon after, the asset's price increased to $10 and then $30, representing a 30 times increase for the year. It exceeded $1,000 per token in 2013.
Of course, Bitcoin's $1,000 threshold is insignificant in light of its recent price peaks. A little under $69,000 was the all-time high, which was attained in 2021.
Although it may be considerably lower currently, many investors are optimistic, particularly in light of the continuous expansion of usage.
Adoption and Awareness are Exploding Quickly
The fact that adoption and awareness don't appear to be stalling, despite the asset's price declining, is one of the reasons there is growing optimism over Bitcoin. The cryptocurrency has gained notoriety after the introduction of the first Bitcoin ATM in the globe in 2013 and the inclusion of the Bitcoin symbol in Unicode, a global encoding standard that assigned special symbols for usage in use in different languages across multiple platforms and programs.
Then a parade of businesses investing in or accepting Bitcoin as payment appeared, which was initially gradual but is now swift. Tesla, Block, and MicroStrategy are a few examples from this list. These businesses have been instrumental in raising public awareness of Bitcoin and encouraging others who are on the fence to give it a try.
The government has benefited from Bitcoin as well. Famously legalizing Bitcoin, El Salvador is stillt investing in the currency. More recently, much to the astonishment of certain international authorities, the Central African Republic also declared Bitcoin to be legal cash.
The Bottom Line
The brief history of Bitcoin has been eventful. The cryptocurrency is anticipated to continue to grow for many more years, and continuously rising adoption will help to support this. The revolutionary financial asset's 14th birthday is just one more milestone in what may turn out to be a lengthy life.
Article Credit: Investopedia.com
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