History of Bitcoin and its Price Over the Year

By  //  February 13, 2022

Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency designed to act as a digital asset. Bitcoin uses cryptography to control its essential operation, such as creating and managing bitcoin. Bitcoin is often regarded as the world’s first cryptocurrency, which is decentralised. It uses public-key cryptography to record transactions over the Blockchain and Bitcoin Blockchain. This process is done without being overlooked by a central authority.

When and how did Bitcoin Start

Bitcoin was first used as currency in 2009. The founder of bitcoin is still unknown, but there is a pseudonymous name called “Satoshi Nakamoto”, who is believed to be the founder of bitcoin. This Nakamoto could be a person, or it could be a bunch of people or an organisation. Like this system, to learn more about bitcoin trading.

Many people have claimed to be Santoshi, but no claims have been verified.

The Journey of Bitcoin started in 2007 when the writing of the code was begun. In Aug 2008, a domain name “bitcoin.org “was registered the following year. And in October 2008, Santoshi published a white paper on a website called “metzdowd.com”. The title of that paper was “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.

 The word “Bitcoin” was defined in that white paper: “it is composed of two words, bit and coin.”

In this white paper, Nakamoto explained the concept of Bitcoin briefly. This paper is still online and accessible.

Bitcoin transactions use a public distributed ledger called “Blockchain”. On 3 January 2009, the bitcoin blockchain was launched. The genesis block was mined on that day which was the first block. 

In its initial month, it was used as a reward to miners. Mining is introducing new bitcoins in circulation by solving problems and puzzles. Crypto-currency mining is a complicated process. Bitcoin mining computers require a huge amount of electricity. The computer sometimes is a very high-end machine that can solve complicated maths puzzles to create a new block on Blockchain. 

The first economic transaction was considered to happen after a year of its inception. It is said that a Florida based man purchased a pizza from “Papa John’s Pizzas” valued at $25, and he negotiated over this money to 1000 bitcoins. This transaction initially set the first bitcoin price at four bitcoins per cent.

In the early days of bitcoins, their value was very random and unpredictable. Early transactions with bitcoins, as in any free trading app, happened via negotiating on the internet at websites like forums where people exchange this currency for goods.

Bitcoin Prices and Values:  

Bitcoin’s first price was $0, and in Oct. 2010, it grew to $0.10. In April 2011, it became equal to $1. By this time, people were not much aware of bitcoin. In 2012 it reached $2. In April 2013, bitcoin reached $100 for the first time to $100. That time people suddenly started talking about bitcoin over the internet. Social website Reddit became a hotspot of enthusiastic professionals and curious netizens amazed about this new currency.

In November 2013, it reached $1000, but after one month, the price dramatically decreased by 50%.

After 2013 for the next four years, the bitcoin price ranges from $100 to $900. 2017 was the year when bitcoin first broke the $1000 mark. Bitcoin reached $2000 in May 2017 and then skyrocketed to over $19000 by December.

2017 to 2019 saw some major ups and downs. Bitcoin was now gaining popularity in mainstream media. And the prices are increasing at a very volatile rate. Sometimes it went higher around $17,527 in January 2018, and sometimes it dipped down to $3,236 in December 2018. At the end of 2019, its price was $7,200.

Coronavirus Pandemic and Bitcoin:

2020 was not good for the world economy. The global pandemic “Corona Virus” started spreading across the globe resulting in slowing down economies. But bitcoin has increased this time very rapidly as its prices reached their all-time high of that time at $29,374 in December 2020.   

2021 was another good year for bitcoin. It reached its all-time high of $64000 in the first half of the year. After some ups and downs in the following months bitcoin reached its all-time high of $68,000 on 10 November 2021.

But due to its volatile nature today, bitcoin’s prices dropped to $42892, but people predict that the price of bitcoin will reach $100,000 by 2023.