Bitcoin launched in 2009 as the first decentralized blockchain network. According to our historical price data, Bitcoin was trading at roughly $0.05 per coin in July 2010. Fast forward to today, Bitcoin is changing hands at nearly $68,000, up close to 137,000,000% since its early days. In this article, we are going to examine Bitcoin’s eventful past and highlight the most important events and developments in its 14-year history. It’s hard to find any conclusive data about when the first BTC trade was made and what the price of Bitcoin was at the time. The earliest data we could find dates back to late 2009 when users on the BitcoinTalk forum exchanged 5,050 BTC for $5.02 through PayPal, putting the price of a single coin at $0.00099. If you bought $100 of Bitcoin at that price, that investment would be more than $50 million. It is worth noting that at the time, Bitcoin was still very new and only really known to people closely familiar with cryptography and Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto.Key highlights:Our earliest Bitcoin price history dates back to July 2010 – at the time, Bitcoin was trading at $0.05. Initially, there was limited price movement between July and September. However, the price of BTC rallied in the second half of October and reached its yearly high of $0.39 in early November.Key highlights: In the first part of 2011, Bitcoin traded in a relatively narrow trading range between $0.29 and $0.75. In May, Bitcoin started mounting its first major rally, with the price reaching its peak value of $29.6 in June. The price quickly retraced and ultimately ended at $5.27 per coin at the end of the year.Key highlights: The price of Bitcoin reached a high point of $13.7 in mid-August. Overall, 2012 can be characterized as a good year for BTC. While the price didn’t record some massive increases, it still benefited from a bullish trend that persisted through the second half of the year. 2012 was the year of the first Bitcoin halving, which reduced coin rewards from 50 BTC to 25 BTC.Key highlights: By late 2013, Bitcoin surged past $1,000 for the first time ever and recorded an impressive +5,575% growth throughout the year. Coincidentally, 2013 was the year that Bitcoin became popular outside of IT and financial circles. Coinbase and Mt. Gox allowed regular retail investors to invest in Bitcoin, which greatly increased the demand for BTC and market liquidity. Key highlights: Unfortunately, Bitcoin’s surge in price and popularity came to a screeching halt in 2014 with the hack of Mt. Gox, then the biggest crypto exchange. The hack greatly soured investor sentiment, and what followed was a two-year-long bear market that saw the price of Bitcoin drop from roughly $1,000 all the way down to $218.Key highlights: Bitcoin’s price went on a massive rally between 2016 and 2017, increasing from $430 to a peak of nearly $20,000 in late 2017. By the end of the year, the crypto craze was in full swing, with many investors investing in various initial coin offerings (ICOs) and altcoins.Key highlights: Following the impressive bull run of 2016 and 2017, Bitcoin’s price retraced below the $10,000 mark in 2018 and dipped all the way to $4,000 by the end of the year. With the COVID-19 outbreak starting in late 2019, the political and economic uncertainty negatively impacted the price of Bitcoin. However, Bitcoin started gaining momentum in mid-2020, with the increase being attributed mostly to the massive amount of fiat being injected into the global financial system to combat the effect of the lockdowns.In February 2021, Bitcoin surpassed $50,000 for the first time ever and broke $60,000 just a month later. The price quickly dipped in July, only to explode to its ATH in November 2021. After that, Bitcoin went on a downward spiral, which brought the price as low as $16,700. In the second half of 2023, Bitcoin found its footing once again and started retracing to previous highs. It finished the year with a closing price of $42,224.Key highlights: Bitcoin has had a very eventful past, both in terms of development and adoption. This has translated into very active price movements – the first recorded BTC trade was executed at $0.00099 per coin, whereas now, 15 years later, the currency is trading above $68,000. While BTC already peaked at a new high of more than $73,600 in March 2024, many analysts believe that the next bull run could take Bitcoin above $100,000.If you want to learn more about how Bitcoin could behave in the future, check our Bitcoin price prediction charts. For a more detailed analysis of Bitcoin’s long-term potential, check our analysis of how high Bitcoin could go in 2040 and 2050.
