Bitcoin is the world’s main cryptocurrency. It is a peer-to-peer currency and transaction system based on a decentralized consensus-based public ledger called blockchain that records all transactions.
Now bitcoin was envisioned by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008, but it was the product of many decades of research into cryptography and blockchain and was not just the work of one guy. Having a borderless, decentralized currency based on blockchain was a utopian dream of cryptographers and free trade advocates. With the growing popularity of bitcoin and other altcoins worldwide, their dream is now a reality.
Now, the cryptocurrency was first placed on a consensus-based blockchain in 2009 and first traded in the same year. In July 2010, the price of bitcoin was only 8 cents, and the number of miners and nodes was very small compared to the tens of thousands today.
Within a year, the new alternative currency rose to $1 and became an interesting prospect for the future. Mining was relatively easy and people made good money trading and even paid with it in some cases.
Within six months, the currency doubled again to $2. Although the price of Bitcoin is not stable at a certain price point, it has been showing this crazy growth pattern for some time. At one point in July 2011, the coin plunged to a record $31 price point, but the market soon realized it was overvalued compared to the gains made on the ground and corrected it back to $2.
There was a healthy rise to $13 in December 2012, but the price would soon explode. In the four months to April 2013, the price rose to $266. It later recovered to $100, but this astronomical price increase was the first time it rose to stardom and people started arguing about the real-world scenario with Bitcoin.
Around that time I was introduced to a new currency. I had my doubts, but the more I read about it, the more it became clear that currency is the future because there is no one to manipulate it or impose themselves on it. Everything had to be done with complete consensus and that was what made it so powerful and liberating.
Thus, 2013 was a breakthrough year for the currency. Large companies have begun to openly favor the adoption of bitcoin, and blockchain has become a popular topic for Computer Science programs. At the time, many people thought that bitcoin had served its purpose and would settle down now.
However, as the currency became more popular, bitcoin ATMs were established around the world, and other competitors began to flex their muscles in various corners of the market. Ethereum developed the first programmable blockchain, and Litecoin and Ripple started as cheaper and faster alternatives to bitcoin.
The magical $1,000 mark was first breached in January 2017 and has already quadrupled since then until September. This is a truly remarkable achievement for a coin that was only worth 8 cents just seven years ago.
Bitcoin even survived the hard fork on August 1, 2017, and has risen nearly 70% since then, even as the fork bitcoin cash managed to have some success. It’s all about the coin’s appeal and the stellar blockchain technology behind it.
Although conventional economists claim that this is a bubble and that the entire crypto world will collapse, it is not. There is no such thing as a bubble because it is an observable fact that fiat currencies and money transactions corporations are actually eating into stocks.
The future is extremely bright for bitcoin, and it’s never too late to invest in it, both for the short-term and the long-term.