Bitcoin price since 2009 to 2019. The historical chart shows the changes of price of Bitcoin (BTC).

Bitcoin history. Bitcoin is the first example of decentralized digital money established in 2008 by a person or a group of people under the pseudonym of Satoshi Nakamoto. This account of bitcoin history resumes the first ten-years (2008 – 2019) of the cryptocurrency. Bitcoin price since 2009 to 2019. Bitcoin price charts.

Pre-history of Bitcoin

Prior to the release of bitcoin there were a number of digital cash technologies starting with the issuer based ecash protocols of David Chaum and Stefan Brands. Adam Back developed hashcash, a proof-of-work scheme for spam control. The first proposals for distributed digital scarcity based cryptocurrencies were Wei Dai‘s b-money and Nick Szabo’s bit gold. Hal Finney developed reusable proof of work (RPOW) using hashcash as its proof of work algorithm.

In the bit gold proposal which proposed a collectible market based mechanism for inflation control, Nick Szabo also investigated some additional enabling aspects including a Byzantine fault-tolerant asset registry to store and transfer the chained proof-of-work solutions. The possibility that Satoshi Nakamoto was a computer collective in the European financial sector has also been discussed.

 

Bitcoin history price chart since 2009 to 2018. On the price chart there is shown historical value of BTC cryptocurrency, log graph of Bitcoin market capitalization and the most reasonable historical dates.

Bitcoin in 2008

 

History of Bitcoin price in 2008, 2009, 2010

On 18 August 2008, the domain name bitcoin.org was registered.

Later that year on October 31st, 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.

On the 9th of November, the Bitcoin project was registered at the open-source-projects community resource, SourceForge.net.

Bitcoin in 2009

In January 2009, the bitcoin network came into existence with the release of the first open source bitcoin client and the issuance of the first bitcoins, with Satoshi Nakamoto mining the first block of bitcoins ever (known as the genesis block), which had a reward of 50 bitcoins. Embedded in the coinbase of this block was the text:

The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.

One of the first supporters, adopters, contributor to bitcoin and receiver of the first bitcoin transaction was programmer Hal Finney. Finney downloaded the bitcoin software the day it was released, and received 10 bitcoins from Nakamoto in the world’s first bitcoin transaction. Other early supporters were Wei Dai, creator of bitcoin predecessor b-money, and Nick Szabo, creator of bitcoin predecessor bit gold. Before disappearing from any involvement in bitcoin, Nakamoto in a sense handed over the reins to developer Gavin Andresen, who then became the bitcoin lead developer at the Bitcoin Foundation, the ‘anarchic’ bitcoin community’s closest thing to an official public face.

How much was bitcoin worth in 2009? It is one of the most popular questions about the history Bitcoin. The value of the first bitcoin transactions were negotiated by individuals on the bitcoin forum with one notable transaction of 10,000 BTC used to indirectly purchase two pizzas delivered by Papa John’s. This was the only major security flaw found and exploited in bitcoin’s history.

• January 3rd The genesis block – the first block in the bitcoin blockchain – appears. 50 BTC are generated at 18:15:05 (GMT).
• January 9th The first version, Bitcoin v0.1., is issued.
• January 12th First bitcoin transaction, (block #170). Sender is Satoshi Nakamoto. Receiver is Hal Finney.
• October 5th The first Bitcoin course towards exchange dollar is published: 1 USD = 1,309.03 BTC. A public sale is launched on New Liberty Standard stock exchange.
• October 9th The #bitcoin-de channel is registered on IRC.
• December 16th Bitcoin v0.2. appears.

Bitcoin in 2010

• February 6th Bitcoin Market, the first official cryptocurrency stock exchange, is launched.
• May 22nd First online purchase using bitcoin. Laszlo Hanyecz (indireclty) buys Papa John’s pizza for 10,000 coins (25 USD – Bitcoin value was 0.0025 cents for 1 coin).
• July 11th Bitcoin v0.3. is mentioned on news website Slashdot.org. The number of bitcoin users increases significantly.
• July 12th Bitcoin exchange rate increases 10 times in ten days, from 0.008 USD per BTC to 0.08 USD per BTC.
• July 17th MtGox Cryptocurrency exchange is launched.
• August 15th A bug in bitcoin code results in a “dirty” transaction in block # 74638. Users easily find the mistake, correct the code and “clean” the block.
• September 14th User jgarzik offers user puddingpop 10,000 coins (600-650 USD) to open their common customer CUDA in Windows base. The first block with assigned distribution, block # 79764, is mined.
• September 18th User puddingpop announces opening of the CUDA customer on Windows base under the MITd license.
• September 29th User kermit finds invasion in micro transaction, after version v0.3.13 is launched.
• October 1st First public miner, Open CL, is created.
• October 7th Bitcoin exchange rate begins to escalate, after several months stuck at USD $0.06 per BTC.
• October 16th First Bitcoin deposit is registered: a deal between users nanotube and Diabo-3, with user theymos as .
• October 17th #bitcoin-otc trade channel appears on IRC freenode.
• October 28th First short trade transaction: 100 coins between users nanotube and kiba on #bitcoin-otc.
• November 6th Bitcoin share capital reaches 1 million USD. Its exchange rate on MtGox reaches USD$0.50 per BTC.
• December 7th User doublec creates a Bitcoin app for the Nokia N900. User ribuck sends 0.42 BTC in the first ever P2P transaction with the help of mobile device.
• December 9th First open call-agreement contract signed between users nanotube and sgornick on #bitcoin-otc.
• December 16th First block generated by mining pool under user sluch.

Bitcoin in 2011

 

Bitcoin history – transactions in 2011, 2012, 2013

Based on bitcoin’s open source code, other cryptocurrencies started to emerge.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit group, started accepting bitcoins in January 2011, then stopped accepting them in June 2011, citing concerns about a lack of legal precedent about new currency systems. The EFF’s decision was reversed on 17 May 2013 when they resumed accepting bitcoin.

• January 8th Pooled mining reaches a capacity of 10 Ghash per second.
• January 27th Biggest monetary transaction in bitcoin history from 3 accounts in Zimbabwe on #bitcoin-otc. The currency value was 4 BTC to 100 trillion Zimbabwe dollars.
• January 28th Block #105000 is generated – at that point, 5.24 million bitcoins had been issued, 25% of the total 21 million.
• February 9th Bitcoin reaches parity with the US dollar (the exchange rate was one BTC to the USD).
• February 10th After bitcoin is mentioned on Slashdot and Hacker News, Bitcoin.org struggles with surge of new users, many coming from Twitter.
• February 14th An Austrian user puts an old Porsche on sale on a bitcoin exchange for 3000 BTC.
• March 1st User MagicalTux buys the exchange Mtgox.com from founder Jed McCaleb.
• March 6th Sudden change in the Bitcoin network: connection speed spikes to 900 Ghash per second and decreases to 500 Ghash per second within a short period of time. There are rumors that it was caused by a supercomputer or network bot, dubbed the “mysterious miner”, connecting to the network.
• March 18th low Bitcoin rate comparing to dollar achieved 70 cent per 1 USD. Before it there has been a current increase of the rate (it is possible that it has been made artificially), then there has been a current decrease.
• March 22nd WeUseCoins published the video What Is Bitcoin? and it goes viral with over 8 million views.
• March 27th First stock to exchange BTC for GBP opens.
• March 31st First stock to exchange BTC for BRL opens.
• April 5th BitMarket.eu, first stock to exchange BTC for PLN, opens
• April 12th Fisrt Bitcoin option agreement is signed, on #bitcoin-otc.
• April 16th TIME magazine publishes an article about crypto currency.
• April 23rd BTC/USD rate reaches and surpasses the USD/EUR price and the USD/GBP rate on MtGox stock exchange. The general capitalization of bitcoins is 10 million USD.
• April 27th VirWoX opens first exchange from BTC/SLL.
• June Wikileaks and other organizations began to accept bitcoins for donations.
• June 2nd USD to BTC rate is 10 USD to the coin. For 6 days, the Bitcoin value is fixed at 31.91 USD on MtGox.
• June 12th BTC to USD rate decrease to 10 USD.
• June 13th The first theft occurs in the history of bitcoin. User allinvain reports 25 thousand coins (375 thousand USD).
• June 19th MtGox’s database suffers a security breach. The names, password hashes and emails of 60 thousands users are stolen. An unknown hacker accesses a MtGox administration account, and sends hundreds of thousands of fake bitcoins, decreasing the value of the crypto currency from 17.5 USD per 1 coin to 1 cent per coin. Sales are resumed a week later. On the same day, thousands of coins are stolen from MyBitcoin accounts. It was one of the biggest bitcoin crashes (hacks) in the history.
• July 22nd BitCoins Mobile, the first mobile app for iPad, is launched.
• August 20th First Bitcoin conference at the World Expo exhibition in New York City.
• August 23rd First decentralized P2Pool mines its first block.
• September Vitalik Buterin co-founded Bitcoin Magazine.
• November 25th First crypto currency conference in Europe, takes place in Prague (Czechia).
• December 12th The biggest amount of fees paid for a block up to date: 171 BTC for block # 157235.
• December 23rd Douglas Feigelson of BitBills filed a patent application for “Creating And Using Digital Currency” with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, an action which was contested based on prior art in June 2013.

Bitcoin in 2012

In January 2012, bitcoin was featured as the main subject within a fictionalized trial on the CBS legal drama The Good Wife in the third-season episode “Bitcoin for Dummies”. The host of CNBC’s Mad Money, Jim Cramer, played himself in a courtroom scene where he testifies that he doesn’t consider bitcoin a true currency, saying “There’s no central bank to regulate it; it’s digital and functions completely peer to peer”.

• March 1st About 50000 BTC are stolen after a security upgrade in Linode; it is the biggest bitcoin theft ever.
• June 3rd The biggest block in the chain, # 181919 is created. It includes 1,322 transactions.
• September 15th-16th Bitcoin conference in London.
• September 27th Bitcoin Foundation organization was launched to “accelerate the global growth of bitcoin through standardization, protection, and promotion of the open source protocol”. The founders were Gavin Andresen, Jon Matonis, Patrick Murck, Charlie Shrem, and Peter Vessenes.
• October BitPay reported having over 1,000 merchants accepting bitcoin under its payment processing service.
• November WordPress had started accepting bitcoins.
• November 28th Block # 210,000 becomes the first block to yield a 25 BTC reward (all previous existing block rewards had been 50 BTC).
• December 6th The France-based exchange Bitcoin-Central becomes the first exchange to operate within the framework of European regulations.

Bitcoin in 2013

• January 22nd BitPay surpasses 10,000 transactions
• February The bitcoin-based payment processor Coinbase reported selling US $1 million worth of bitcoins in a single month at over $22 per bitcoin. The Internet Archive announced that it was ready to accept donations as bitcoins and that it intends to give employees the option to receive portions of their salaries in bitcoin currency.
• February 19th The 8th version of Bitcoin Client appears.
• February 28th Bitcoin exchange rate surpasses 31.91 USD for the first time for the last 601 days.
• March In March the bitcoin transaction log called the blockchain temporarily split into two independent chains with differing rules on how transactions were accepted. For six hours two bitcoin networks operated at the same time, each with its own version of the transaction history. The core developers called for a temporary halt to transactions, sparking a sharp sell-off. The Mt. Gox exchange briefly halted bitcoin deposits and the exchange rate briefly dipped by 23% to $37 as the event occurred in the US, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) established regulatory guidelines for “decentralized virtual currencies” such as bitcoin, classifying American “bitcoin miners” who sell their generated bitcoins as Money Service Businesses (or MSBs), that may be subject to registration and other legal obligations. resulting in the bitcoin exchange rate dropping from $266 to $76 before returning to $160 within six hours. Bitcoin gained greater recognition when services such as OkCupid and Foodler began accepting it for payment.
• March 28th Bitcoin capitalization surpasses 1 billion USD.
• April 1st Exchange rate of Bitcoin reaches 100 USD to 1 BTC.
• May WebMoney announces creation of a new type of cash-box intended for operations with bitcoins.
• May 15th the US authorities seized accounts associated with Mt. Gox after discovering that it had not registered as a money transmitter with FinCEN in the US.
• May 17th It was reported that BitInstant processed approximately 30 percent of the money going into and out of bitcoin, and in April alone facilitated 30,000 transactions.
• June 23rd It was reported that the US Drug Enforcement Administration listed 11.02 bitcoins as a seized asset in a United States Department of Justice seizure notice pursuant to 21 U.S.C. § 881. It is the first time a government agency has claimed to have seized bitcoin.
• July A historical project began in Kenya linking bitcoin with M-Pesa, a popular mobile payments system, in an experiment designed to spur innovative payments in Africa. During the same month the Foreign Exchange Administration and Policy Department in Thailand stated that bitcoin lacks any legal framework and would therefore be illegal, which effectively banned trading on bitcoin exchanges in the country. According to Vitalik Buterin, a writer for Bitcoin Magazine, “bitcoin’s fate in Thailand may give the electronic currency more credibility in some circles”, but he was concerned it didn’t bode well for bitcoin in China.
• August 6th Federal Judge Amos Mazzant of the Eastern District of Texas of the Fifth Circuit ruled that bitcoins are “a currency or a form of money” (specifically securities as defined by Federal Securities Laws), and as such were subject to the court’s jurisdiction, and Germany’s Finance Ministry subsumed bitcoins under the term “unit of account” – a financial instrument – though not as e-money or a functional currency, a classification nonetheless having legal and tax implications.
• October the FBI seized roughly 26,000 BTC from website Silk Road during the arrest of alleged owner Ross William Ulbricht.
• October 29th Robocoin and Bitcoiniacs launched the world’s first Bitcoin ATM in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, allowing clients to sell or purchase bitcoin currency at a downtown coffee shop. Chinese internet giant Baidu had allowed clients of website security services to pay with bitcoins.
• November The first time in the history, Bitcoin costs over 1000 USD after BTC is supported by American game creator Zynga.
• November The University of Nicosia announced that it would be accepting bitcoin as payment for tuition fees, with the university’s chief financial officer calling it the “gold of tomorrow”. During the November 2013, the China-based bitcoin exchange BTC China overtook the Japan-based Mt. Gox and the Europe-based Bitstamp to become the largest bitcoin trading exchange by trade volume.
• December Overstock.com announced plans to accept Bitcoin in the second half of 2014.
• December 5th the People’s Bank of China prohibited Chinese financial institutions from using bitcoins. After the announcement, the Bitcoin value dropped, and Baidu no longer accepted bitcoins for certain services. Buying real-world goods with any virtual currency has been illegal in China since at least 2009.
• December 9th 100 USD are stolen from bitcoin wallets.
• December China banned the use of cryptocurrency in the country. One of the largest exchanges in the world BTC China was closed. Behind China, Norway did not recognize bitcoins.

Bitcoin in 2014

 

History of Bitcoin capitalization in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017

A documentary film, The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin, was released in 2014, featuring interviews with bitcoin users, such as a computer programmer and a drug dealer.

• January Elliptic Vault, the first bitcoin safe storage, opens in London. Bitcoin begins to oust euro in Ireland. More companies agree to accept bitcoin a payment for services. Zynga announced it was testing bitcoin for purchasing in-game assets in seven of its games. That same month, The D Las Vegas Casino Hotel and Golden Gate Hotel & Casino properties in downtown Las Vegas announced they would also begin accepting bitcoin, according to an article by USA Today. The article also stated the currency would be accepted in five locations, including the front desk and certain restaurants. The network rate exceeded 10 petahash/sec. TigerDirect and Overstock.com started accepting bitcoin.
• January 24th BTC China renews sales.
• January 28th Vice-president of the Bitcoin Foundation arrested under money laundering charges. As a result of the ensuing panic, bitcoin exchange rate decreased by 40 USD.
• February One of the largest bitcoin exchanges, Mt.Gox, suspended withdrawals citing technical issues. By the end of the month, Mt. Gox had filed for bankruptcy protection in Japan amid reports that 744,000 bitcoins had been stolen. Months before the filing, the popularity of Mt. Gox had waned as users experienced difficulties withdrawing funds.
• February 1st American newspaper The Chicago Sun-Times accepts payment in bitcoin for subscriptions.
• February 10th-12th Problems with transactions in several big stock exchanges. Bitcoin price decreased to USD $600 (a historical 30% decrease).
• June The network exceeded 100 petahash/sec.
• June 18th Tt was announced that bitcoin payment service provider BitPay would become the new sponsor of St.Petersburg Bowl under a two-year deal, renamed the Bitcoin St. Petersburg Bowl. Bitcoin was to be accepted for ticket and concession sales at the game as part of the sponsorship, and the sponsorship itself was also paid for using bitcoin.
• July Newegg and Dell started accepting bitcoin.
• September TeraExchange, LLC, received approval from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission “CFTC” to begin listing an over-the-counter swap product based on the price of a bitcoin. The CFTC swap product approval marks the first time a U.S. regulatory agency approved a bitcoin financial product.
• November 5th Buttercoin, a US venture-backed bitcoin exchange, is launched.
• December Microsoft began to accept bitcoin to buy Xbox games and Windows software.

In 2014, several lighthearted songs celebrating bitcoin such as the Ode to Satoshi have been released.

Bitcoin in 2015

 

Number of bitcoin transactions per month since 2009 to 2017

• January Coinbase raised 75 million USD as part of a Series C funding round, smashing the previous record for a bitcoin company. Less than one year after the collapse of Mt.Gox, United Kingdom-based exchange Bitstamp announced that their exchange would be taken offline while they investigate a hack which resulted in about 19,000 bitcoins (equivalent to roughly US $5 million at that time) being stolen from their hot wallet. The exchange remained offline for several days amid speculation that customers had lost their funds. Bitstamp resumed trading on 9 January after increasing security measures and assuring customers that their account balances would not be impacted.
• February Bitcoin price reached $262.
• March Bitcoin startup 21 Inc. announced it had raised 116 million USD in venture funding, the largest amount for any digital currency-related companies.
• May Ulbricht was found guilty on 7 charges of money laundering, computer hacking, and drug conspiracy in February because of his role as an operator in the silk road market.
• June new York state Department of financial services Superintendent Benjamin Lowkey released a set of individual rules designed to regulate the Bitcoin and digital currency business that serve customers located in new York state. These rules are the first ever aimed at digital currency enterprises.
• July Former Federal agents Carl Force IV (DEA) and Shaun Bridges (Secret Service) pleaded guilty to stealing bitcoins during their active investigation into the Silk Road market.
• August It was estimated that 160,000 merchants accept bitcoin payments. Barclays announced that they would become the first UK high street bank to start accepting bitcoin, with a plan to facilitate users to make charitable donations using the cryptocurrency outside their systems. They partnered in April 2016 with mobile payment startup Circle Internet Financial.
• September The commodity futures trading Commission (CFTC) announced that it has filed and set payments for the bitcoin exchange to facilitate trading of options contracts on its platform.
• October, the possibility of adding a symbol for bitcoin in Unicode is presented in the Unicode Consortium. Also at this time Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss released their own American bitcoin, called “Twins”. After the launch, the exchange was licensed to operate in 26 States and was able to “serve both individual and institutional clients” due to its corporate structure, LLTC. The twins were also able to offer FDIC insurance on customer deposits through a partnership with a Bank in New York. The European court of justice ruled that the exchange of Bitcoin and” virtual currencies ” does not apply to value added tax (VAT) in the European Union.
• November Historical date for Bitcoin – The Unicode Committee adopted the bitcoin currency symbol (in uppercase B with two vertical bars passing through it but only visible from above and below) to be in a future version of the Unicode standard. The glyph will be assigned the «U + 20BF BITCOIN SIGN» slot and will eventually be displayed in standard system fonts.
• December Security researcher and writer, Gvern Branwen, published an article in WIRED magazine claiming that an Australian man named Dr. Craig S. Wright was either Satoshi Nakamoto or a “brilliant hoaxer.” Gvern brought a few deleted messages in the blog of Wright, leaked emails and transcripts, which seemed to imply that Wright is the creator of Bitcoin. In one missed decryption, Wright himself States,”I did my best to try to hide the fact that I’ve been working with bitcoin since 2009.” In another document it is told that Wright had access to Vidoescom trust 1.1 million bitcoins.

Bitcoin in 2016

• January Network speed exceeds 1 exahash/sec.
• February Influential members of the bitcoin community met in Hong Kong to discuss a development plan and schedule for bitcoin scaling. The closed-door meeting included more than 30 people, service providers and bitcoin Core developers and was intended to address issues related to the block size discussion.
• March The Cabinet of Japan acknowledges virtual currencies like Bitcoin as payment means on an equal basis with real money. The largest South African online cryptocurrency market, Bidorbuy, opens.
• April The Steam service starts accepting bitcoin as payment for video games and other online media.
• May Wright publicly announced that he was Satoshi Nakamoto through a blog post.
• July Researchers published a paper showing that by November 2013 bitcoin commerce was no longer driven by “sin” activities but instead by legitimate enterprises. Uber switched to bitcoin in Argentina after the government blocked credit card companies from dealing with Uber.
• August Hackers attack Bitfinex, a large exchange, taking almost 120 000 bitcoins (about $60 million USD).
• September The number of bitcoin ATMs had doubled over the last 18 months and reached 771 ATMs worldwide.
• November The Swiss railway operator SBB (CFF) upgraded all their automated ticket machines so that bitcoin could be bought from them using the scanner on the ticket machine to scan the bitcoin address on a phone app.

The history and future of Bitcoin generates more academic interest year after year; the number of Google Scholar articles published mentioning bitcoin grew from 83 in 2009, to 424 in 2012, and to 3580 in 2016. Also, the academic Ledger Journal published its first issue. It is edited by Peter Rizun.

Bitcoin in 2017

 

Bitcoin historical chart of price for 2017, 2018

Through out the time, the number of businesses accepting bitcoin continues to increase. In January 2017, NHK reported the number of online stores accepting bitcoin in Japan had increased 4.6 times over the past year. BitPay CEO Stephen Pair declared the company’s transaction rate grew 3× from January 2016 to February 2017, and explained usage of bitcoin is growing in B2B supply chain payments.

Since the start of history, by 2017 Bitcoin gains more legitimacy among lawmakers and legacy financial companies. For example, Japan passed a law to accept bitcoin as a legal payment method, and Russia has announced that it will legalize the use of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin. And Norway’s largest online bank, Skandiabanken, integrates bitcoin accounts.

Exchange trading volumes continue to increase. For the 6-month period ending March 2017, Mexican exchange Bitso saw trading volume increase 1500%. Between January and May 2017 Poloniex saw an increase of more than 600% active traders online and regularly processed 640% more transactions.

• January. After the rally for most of the second half of 2016, bitcoin broke the $ 1,000 mark for the first time in 3 years. Media coverage leads to an influx of new users who will allegedly raise the price even higher.
• March Number of GitHub projects related with bitcoin exceeds 10,000.
• April Japan recognizes bitcoin as a legal method of payment. The country’s legislature passed a law, after months of debate, that led bitcoin exchanges to comply with anti-money laundering rules/information about your client, and classified bitcoin as a kind of prepaid payment instrument.
• June The Bitcoin symbol was encoded in Unicode version 10.0 at position U+20BF (₿) in the Currency Symbols block.
• June 12th Bitcoin exchange rate exceeds USD$3000 to the BTC.
• August 1st Bitcoin split into two derivative digital currencies, the classic bitcoin (BTC) and the Bitcoin Cash (BCH). The split has been called the Bitcoin Cash hard fork.
• September 1st Bitcoin exchange rate exceeds USD$5000.
• October China forbids cryptocurrencies and ICOs.
• November 29th In 2017 Bitcoin price exceeds USD 10,000.
• December Cboe Global Markets begins offering bitcoin futures, allowing investors to speculate about bitcoin prices.
• December 6th The software marketplace Steam announced that it would no longer accept bitcoin as payment for its products, citing slow transactions speeds and price volatility.
• December 11th Futures on the world’s most popular cryptocurrency rose by 26 percent from the opening price at their debut session on the CBOE Global Markets Inc., triggering two temporary trading stops aimed at calming the market.
• December 18th. Bitcoin reaches a record high, but does not reach $ 20,000.
• December 28th The price of bitcoins fell after South Korea announced additional measures to regulate bitcoin trading, including the potential closure of exchanges, among the volatile movements in the world’s third largest cryptocurrency market.

What is interesting, the Bitcoin price was less than $3000 at the beginning of 2017, later it cost about 5000 of dollars, by the end of the year the Bitcoin worth almost USD 20000.

Bitcoin in 2018

2018 has been a rough year for Bitcoin and it’s users, especially people who held on assuming the price would keep ascending. Many sold the cryptocurrency while they could, and the price has been steadily dropping all year. As of this writing, Bitcoin’s price was at $3,732.04.

• January 2nd Peter Thiel Foundation bought millions of dollars in bitcoin, the Wall Street Journal reports citing sources familiar with the situation. The paper says these stocks are worth hundreds of millions of dollars. It is unclear whether the Founders sold any of their stocks, the report said.
• January 8th Coinmarketcap removed prices from South Korean exchanges from its cryptocurrency settlements without warning, which led to a sharp drop in all prices. In addition, the financial authorities of Korea on January 8 began an investigation of services related to cryptocurrencies provided by local banks.
• January 13th Out of a total of 21 million people, on January 13, 2018, 16 800 000 BTC were produced, and only 20% remained for production.
• January 22nd, South Korea brought in a regulation that requires all the bitcoin traders to reveal their identity, thus putting a ban on anonymous trading of bitcoins.
• January 24th, the online payment firm Stripe announced that it would phase out its support for bitcoin payments by late April 2018, citing declining demand, rising fees and longer transaction times as the reasons.
• January 30th Facebook banned people from fully advertising bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
• February 5th, Bitcoin’s price dropped 50 percent in 16 days, falling below $7,000.
• March 7th The U.S. securities and exchange Commission confirmed that many online trading platforms for digital assets should be registered with the Agency as exchanges. Statement the SEC has heightened concerns about the fact that the regulation tightening might restrict trade.
• March 14th Google announced that it prohibits online advertising promoting cryptocurrency
• March 26th Twitter announced that it would ban advertising for cryptocurrencies, after overclocking Google and Facebook, which aims to protect investors from fraud.
• April 13th one of India’s largest cryptocurrency trading platforms lost about 438 bitcoins worth about 190 million rupees ($3 million), presumably due to an employee.
• May 2nd one of the largest investment banks announced that Goldman is going to start using its own money to trade with customers on various contracts related to the price of Bitcoin.
• May 24th The justice Department opened a criminal case about whether traders manipulate the price of bitcoins and other digital currencies. The investigation focuses on illegal activities that can affect prices such as spoofing or flooding the market with fake orders to trick other traders into buying or selling.
• June 10th South Korean exchanger Coinrail loses more than $ 40 million in tokens after hacking.
• October 31st $6,300, on the 10 year anniversary of Bitcoin, price holds steady above $6,000 during a period of historically low volatility.
• November 14th, Falling below $6000.
• November 24th, Falling below $4,000 (source Cointelegraph.com).Bitcoin price history 2009 to 2019

Among the factors which may have contributed to this rise were the European sovereign-debt crisis—particularly the 2012–2013 Cypriot financial crisis—statements by FinCEN improving the currency’s legal standing and rising media and Internet interest.

Since 2009 and until 2013, almost all market with bitcoins were in US Dollars ($).

As the market valuation of the total stock of bitcoins approached US $1 billion, some commentators called bitcoin prices a bubble. In early April 2013, the price per bitcoin dropped from $266 to around $50 and then rose to around $100. Over two weeks starting late June 2013 the price dropped steadily to $70. The price began to recover, peaking once again on 1 October at $140. On 2 October, The Silk Road was seized by the FBI. This Ross Ulbricht caused a flash crash to $110. The price quickly rebounded, returning to $200 several weeks later. The latest run went from $200 on 3 November to $900 on 18 November. Bitcoin passed US $1,000 on 28 November 2013 at Mt.Gox.

Prices fell to around $400 in April 2014, before rallying in the middle of the year. They then declined to not much more than $200 in early 2015.

Bitcoin price chart since 2009 to 2018

Bitcoin in 2019

• From the beginning of the year, the capitalization of the digital money market increased by 32% – in 2019 it amounts to $ 165 billion.
• In December 2018, Bitcoin set an annual minimum of $ 3,242.
• At the end of February 2019, a positive dynamic of Bitcoin growth was observed.
• In March, it became known that the Iranian government, which banned cryptocurrencies on the territory of its state, is now ready to accept them and even promote them.
• At the beginning of April 2019, the rate of Bitcoin soared by 15%, testing the mark of 5 thousand dollars. Experts explain this anomaly by the return of major players to the market. The growth of Bitcoin on April 2, 2019 occurred in the Asian session, and an unknown buyer purchased 20 thousand bitcoins, which amounts to $ 94 million.
• In May, Bitcoin price continued to rise. On 29 May 2019, the price of BTC is equal to $8721.
• In June, the price of Bitcoin beats all records. At first, the bitcoin rate is testing the $ 10,000 mark, and then it continues to grow.
• At the beginning of July, Bitcoin price extremely rose up to $12 500 but fluctuated from $12 500 to $9 300.
• In August, after the rise and fall Bitcoin price varies around $10 300. The Bitcoin dominance was below 60% for a long period (from May 2017 to June 2019). In summer 2019, BTC dominance managed to spike to 90% level.

In 2019 IRS makes all the cryptocurrency trades, profits, and losses taxable, releasing Form 8949.

Bitcoin in 2020

While the Bitcoin price reached $10k again by the early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic made severe corrections. In March the panic sale on the stock market triggered investors to dump their crypto. What became known as Black Thursday saw an unprecedented downfall of crypto prices. In two days Bitcoin dropped from over $9,000 to below $4,000.

Soon, the crypto market saw a resurgence. The pandemic shutdown prompted many people to look closer at cryptocurrency as an investment. Many of them invested stimulus payments from governments into Bitcoin and other cryptos. 

On May 11, 2020, Bitcoin reward dropped by 50% in another halving event. The price increased from $6.9 to $9.8 in one month. 

In July and September 2020 several European finance institutions began to accept Bitcoin-based exchange-traded notes and exchange-traded products.

On October 21, 2020, PayPal started to accept Bitcoin payments. 

By the end of the year, Bitcoin reached nearly $29,000. The overall 2020 growth exceeded 400%. The huge 2021 Bitcoin bull run was already starting.

Bitcoin in 2021

The 2021 Bitcoin rush began with a series of announcements by tech companies and influencers. Each one fueled the crypto prices.

On January 19, 2021, Elon Musk changed his Twitter bio to “Bitcoin” and posted a tweet “it was inevitable.” The BTC price soared by $5,000 in several hours. Later, Musk did several more tweets that boosted the BTC and DOGE prices, moving the entire crypto market up.

On January 25, 2021 a fintech company Microstrategy announced it holds 70.7k BTC (over $2.38 billion at the time). Another company doing a similar move in the early 2021 was Square.

On February 8, 2021 Tesla announced acquiring $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin and starting to accept BTC as a payment for its products. The news sent the BTC price to a $44k mark. 

On February 19, 2021, Bitcoin reached $1 trillion in market value for the first time. The same month the Swiss canton Zug started to accept BTC to pay taxes.

On February 25, 2021, the artwork of a digital artist Beeple “Everydas: The First 5000 Days” was sold on auction as an NFT for a whopping $69 million. The news regarding this deal turned more heads to the crypto market and helped Bitcoin to rise even higher.

On April 14, 2021, the biggest American crypto exchange Coinbase went public. The same day Bitcoin reached a new maximum price at $64,895. 

On May 12, 2021, Tesla announced it will no longer accept Bitcoin, citing environmental effects as the reason. The other day the BTC price dropped by 12%.

On June 8, 2021, El Salvador became the first country in the world to accept Bitcoin as legal tender.

On October 15, 2021, the first futures-based Bitcoin ETFs were approved by the SEC. 

On November 10, 2021, Bitcoin hit a new all-time high at $69,000. 

On November 12, 2021, Bitcoin went through the first in four years major upgrade called Taproot that made transactions cheaper and more private. 

At the end of the year the news about the COVID-19 variation Omicron triggered another sell-off on the crypto market. Bitcoin closed the year at around $46k which is around 80% more than the December 2020 price. 

Bitcoin in 2022

The February 14, 2022, Super Bowl is sometimes referred to as Crypto Bowl because of the numerous ads of crypto companies displayed during the event. 

However, as the Federal Reserve began to raise stakes (it was struggling with inflation in 2022), the crypto prices began to decline. 

The March hack of the Ronin network ($635 million in crypto stolen) and the May collapse of the Terra-LUNA project caused the BTC price to drop below $30,000. The same month Wikipedia announced it stops accepting BTC donations for the first since 2016.

June of 2022 saw a number of bankruptcies of cryptocurrency projects, including Celsius and Voyager. It brought the price down to around $20,000. 

As the companies continued to collapse or lay off employees, the BTC price kept going down, dropping below $20,000 in July.

After the November collapse of one of the biggest crypto exchanges FTX, the BTC price reached the bottom at around $16k (which was the lowest price since 2020). In December of 2022, the BTC price was below $17,000.

Bitcoin in 2023

The economic troubles and banking failures caused the Bitcoin price resurgence in March of 2023. The Bitcoin price exceeded $28,000. By the summer the price moved to $25,000 while Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao and Coinbase Global faced charges.

On June 15, 2023, the world’s leading asset manager company, BlackRock announced that it started accepting BTC-based ETFs. Following the announcement, the Bitcoin price reached $30,000 for a while.

As several financial institutions started to support Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general, the BTC price continued to grow, reaching over $42 thousand by the end of the year.

Bitcoin in 2024

In early 2024, the U.S. The Energy Information Agency reported that the annual electricity volume used for the Bitcoin mining and mining of other cryptocurrencies represents 0.6% to 2.3% of the national electricity consumption. By that time around two million bitcoins were still not mined.

In January of 2024 the Bitcoin spot ETFs were approved by the SEC as a result of the court battle. As the demand for the Bitcoin ETFs on the market was remarkable, the BTC price began to grow, exceeding the $73k mark for the first time in March. Soon the huge companies started to create their own Bitcoin ETFs. 

Although the price dropped below $62k soon, the BTC price turned out to be solid in 2024. One of the reasons is the April 19 2024 Bitcoin reward halving. The mining reward drops to 3.125 BTC per block.

On September 18, 2024, the U.S. Federal Reserve cut the federal funds rates to nearly 5% for the first time in four years. It boosted the stock market and the BTC price followed as well. It gained $4,000 in two days, reaching $64,000 on September 19.

The November 5 U.S. presidential election day unleashed another Bitcoin rally. The bull run continued in the following days gaining 17% in six days. On November 11 Bitcoin reached a new record price at $89,604.5, surpassing $80k for the very first time. Throughout November, BTC price updated its ATH several times. On December 5, Bitcoin reached $100,000 for the first time in its history, peaking at $103,679 that day. Experts attribute the rally to the crypto-friendly rhetoric of the now-elected US President Trump during the campaign. Investors anticipate new favorable cryptocurrency regulations.

On December 15 Donald Trump confirmed his plans to create a strategic Bitcoin reserve. At the same time a crypto company MictroStrategy was included in Nasdaq 100. These two events triggered another Bitcoin rally. As a result, Bitcoin reached the new historical maximum at $107,822 and the market cap exceeded $21.07 trillion.

Donald Trump’s impact on cryptocurrency

During his first presidential run, Donald Trump was not a cryptocurrency advocate. In a 2019 tweet, he expressed disapproval of cryptocurrencies, associating them to unlawful activity and saying that cryptocurrency value is based on thin air.

However, while campaigning before the 2024 election Trump demonstrated clear interest in cryptocurrencies. He started to accept donations in cryptocurrency and announced a number of regulations that he is going to introduce after his victory in the election. Trump declared he’s going to make America a “crypto capital of the world”.

Now that he won the election and the senate has a republican majority, Trump’s plans will face little to no pushback. The crypto market reacted to Trump’s victory immediately, even before the final confirmation of the election results. On Monday, a day before the election, the BTC price was $68k. On Wednesday, the price peaked at $76k. The rally didn’t stop there. On November 19, BTC hit its all-time high at $94,002. Two weeks later, BTC surpassed the $100k mark. As the rally was caused by the victory of the pro-crypto candidate, experts quickly dubbed this rally “Trump trade.”

As of November 2024, experts and media discuss several promises Trump made about cryptocurrencies. The sources close to him state the new administration plans to eliminate capital gains taxes on cryptocurrencies issued by the US companies. This could make the USA an attractive jurisdiction for any ambitious cryptocurrency project which in turn really contributes to turning America into a global crypto hub.

At the Nashville cryptocurrency conference in July Trump suggested establishing a national cryptocurrency stockpile. Trump said that the government will never sell bitcoins. He promised that the state would store cryptocurrency funds amassed from seizures. “If crypto is going to define the future, I want it to be mined, minted and made in the USA,” said Trump. He confirmed his strategic Bitcoin reserve plans in December.

Another notable promise Trump made during the Nashville conference is that he’s going to fire US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Gary Gensler. Gensler is known for his strict treatment of cryptocurrencies. As of November 2024, the SEC has a number of ongoing lawsuits against the cryptocurrency companies. On November 21 Gary Gensler announced that he is going to leave his position in the SEC in January 2025.

On top of this, Donald Trump and his sons endorse a new DeFi platform called World Liberty Financial (WLFI). The project is created in partnership with Chainlink.

Regulatory issues

On 18 March 2013, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (or FinCEN), a bureau of the United States Department of the Treasury, issued a report regarding centralized and decentralized “virtual currencies” and their legal status within “money services business” (MSB) and Bank Secrecy Act regulations. Since FinCEN issued this guidance, dozens of virtual currency exchangers and administrators have registered with FinCEN, and FinCEN is receiving an increasing number of suspicious activity reports (SARs) from these entities.

Additionally, FinCEN claimed regulation over American entities that manage bitcoins in a payment processor setting or as an exchanger: “In addition, a person is an exchanger and a money transmitter if the person accepts such de-centralized convertible virtual currency from one person and transmits it to another person as part of the acceptance and transfer of currency, funds, or other value that substitutes for currency.”

In summary, FinCEN’s decision would require bitcoin exchanges where bitcoins are traded for traditional currencies to disclose large transactions and suspicious activity, comply with money laundering regulations, and collect information about their customers as traditional financial institutions are required to do.

Patrick Murck of the Bitcoin Foundation criticized FinCEN’s report as an “overreach” and claimed that FinCEN “cannot rely on this guidance in any enforcement action”.

Jennifer Shasky Calvery, the director of FinCEN said, “Virtual currencies are subject to the same rules as other currencies. Basic money-services business rules apply here.”

In 2013, the U.S. Treasury extended its anti-money laundering regulations to processors of bitcoin transactions.

In June 2013, Bitcoin Foundation board member Jon Matonis wrote in Forbes that he received a warning letter from the California Department of Financial Institutions accusing the foundation of unlicensed money transmission. Matonis denied that the foundation is engaged in money transmission and said he viewed the case as “an opportunity to educate state regulators.”

In late July 2013, the industry group Committee for the Establishment of the Digital Asset Transfer Authority began to form to set best practices and standards, to work with regulators and policymakers to adapt existing currency requirements to digital currency technology and business models and develop risk management standards.

In 2014, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed an administrative action against Erik T. Voorhees, for violating Securities Act Section 5 for publicly offering unregistered interests in two bitcoin websites in exchange for bitcoins.

Theft and exchange shutdowns

Bitcoins can be stored in a bitcoin cryptocurrency wallet. Historical theft of bitcoin has been documented on numerous occasions. At other times, bitcoin exchanges have shut down, taking their clients’ bitcoins with them. A Wired study published April 2013 showed that 45 percent of bitcoin exchanges end up closing.

On 19 June 2011, a security breach of the Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange caused the nominal price of a bitcoin to fraudulently drop to one cent on the Mt. Gox exchange, after a hacker used credentials from a Mt. Gox auditor’s compromised computer illegally to transfer a large number of bitcoins to himself. They used the exchange’s software to sell them all nominally, creating a massive “ask” order at any price. Within minutes, the price reverted to its correct user-traded value. Accounts with the equivalent of more than US $8,750,000 were affected.

In August 2011, MyBitcoin, a now defunct bitcoin transaction processor, declared that it was hacked, which caused it to be shut down, paying 49% on customer deposits, leaving more than 78,000 bitcoins (equivalent to roughly US $800,000 at that time) unaccounted for.

In early August 2012, a lawsuit was filed in San Francisco court against Bitcoinica — a bitcoin trading venue — claiming about US$ 460,000 from the company. Bitcoinica was hacked twice in 2012, which led to allegations that the venue neglected the safety of customers’ money and cheated them out of withdrawal requests.

In late August 2012, an operation titled Bitcoin Savings and Trust was shut down by the owner, leaving around US$5.6 million in bitcoin-based debts; this led to allegations that the operation was a Ponzi scheme. In September 2012, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission had reportedly started an investigation on the case.

In September 2012, Bitfloor, a bitcoin exchange, also reported being hacked, with 24,000 bitcoins (worth about US$250,000) stolen. As a result, Bitfloor suspended operations. The same month, Bitfloor resumed operations; its founder said that he reported the theft to FBI, and that he plans to repay the victims, though the time frame for repayment is unclear.

On 3 April 2013, Instawallet, a web-based wallet provider, was hacked, resulting in the theft of over 35,000 bitcoins which were valued at US$129.90 per bitcoin at the time, or nearly $4.6 million in total. As a result, Instawallet suspended operations.

In October 2013, Inputs.io, an Australian-based bitcoin wallet provider was hacked with a loss of 4100 bitcoins, worth over A$1 million at time of theft. The service was run by the operator TradeFortress. Coinchat, the associated bitcoin chat room, has been taken over by a new admin.

On 26 October 2013, a Hong-Kong based bitcoin trading platform owned by Global Bond Limited (GBL) vanished with 30 million yuan (US $5 million) from 500 investors.

Mt. Gox, the Japan-based exchange that in 2013 handled 70% of all worldwide bitcoin traffic, declared bankruptcy in February 2014, with bitcoins worth about $390 million missing, for unclear reasons. The CEO was eventually arrested and charged with embezzlement.

On 3 March 2014, Flexcoin announced it was closing its doors because of a hack attack that took place the day before. In a statement that now occupies their homepage, they announced on 3 March 2014 that “As Flexcoin does not have the resources, assets, or otherwise to come back from this loss the hack, we are closing our doors immediately.” Users can no longer log into the site.

Chinese cryptocurrency exchange Bter lost $2.1 million in BTC in February 2015.

The Slovenian exchange Bitstamp lost bitcoin worth $5.1 million to a hack in January 2015.

The US-based exchange Cryptsy declared bankruptcy in January 2016, ostensibly because of a 2014 hacking incident; the court-appointed receiver later alleged that Cryptsy’s CEO had stolen $3.3 million.

In May 2016, Gatecoin closed temporarily after a breach had caused a loss of about $2 million in cryptocurrency. It subsequently relaunched its exchange in August 2016 and is slowly reimbursing its customers.

In August 2016, hackers stole some $72 million in customer bitcoin from the Hong-Kong-based exchange Bitfinex.

In December 2017, hackers stole 4,700 Bitcoins from Nicehash a platform that allowed users to sell hashing power. The value of the stolen bitcoins totaled about $80M. It is one of the biggest hacks in the history of Bitcoin.

Lost Bitcoins

At the «Building on Bitcoin» conference, former BitGo lead developer Jameson Lopp revealed that about 4 million bitcoins were lost forever, and another 2 million were stolen.

Thus, as of July 2018, a total of 6 million BTC remain unavailable. And if we consider that it is impossible to carry out a hard fork to restore them, then 28.5% of the fixed issue of bitcoins (21 million) is lost completely. The loss of almost 30% of the total will ultimately significantly increase the value of the cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin taxation and regulation history

In 2012, the Cryptocurrency Legal Advocacy Group (CLAG) stressed the importance for taxpayers to determine whether taxes are due on a bitcoin-related transaction based on whether one has experienced a “realization event”: when a taxpayer has provided a service in exchange for bitcoins, a realization event has probably occurred and any gain or loss would likely be calculated using fair market values for the service provided.”

In August 2013, the German Finance Ministry characterized bitcoin as a unit of account.

On 5 December 2013, the People’s Bank of China announced in a press release regarding bitcoin regulation that whilst individuals in China are permitted to freely trade and exchange bitcoins as a commodity, it is prohibited for Chinese financial banks to operate using bitcoins or for bitcoins to be used as legal tender currency, and that entities dealing with bitcoins must track and report suspicious activity to prevent money laundering. Historically, the bitcoin value dropped on various exchanges between 11 and 20 percent following the regulation announcement, before rebounding upward again.

See Also on BitcoinWiki

• Ethereum
• Mining
• Coin burn
• Sharding
• Cold storage
• FAQ

Sources

• – History of Bitcoin on Wikipedia.org
• SourceForge community
• Bitcoin-Central, first exchange licensed to operate with a bank
• Business Insider – A Bitcoin Startup Just Set A Massive New Record For VC Funding in The Industry – Bitcoin history
• Is Bitcoin dead? Bitcoin Market Influence
• History and future of Bitcoin (BTC) – CNN.com
• Buy Bitcoin with a credit card