Starting to Fall and Fall in Bitcoin – Bitcoin (BTC) can be said to be still in its teens because it was only launched in 2009 by Satoshi Nakamoto. Since then, the price of Bitcoin has experienced a rapid increase, rising from a fraction of a cent to an all-time high of nearly IDR 1.05 billion in November 2021.
According to Forbes, Bitcoin generated profits of more than 230% during the 10 year period ending March 2021. For that reason alone, Bitcoin has now become firmly entrenched as the strongest crypto currency.
However, Bitcoin’s price journey is far from smooth. The digital currency has experienced many drastic drops and declines.
Bitcoin Initial Price
Bitcoin was originally worth nothing.
The transaction that first assigned monetary value to Bitcoin was in October 2009, when Finnish computer science student Martti Malmi, known online as Sirius, sold 5,050 coins for around IDR 76,840 making each Bitcoin worth $0.0009.
The transaction occurred on PayPal. As hard as it is to believe, that move was the start of today’s crypto exchanges dedicated to buying and selling BTC.
Bitcoin’s Early Years: 2009 to 2012
BTC adoption growth in the early years started slowly. If you look at Bitcoin price data on Google Finance, the data only comes from November 20, 2015.
The early years were characterized by very little infrastructure, with only a few hobbyists buying and selling BTC.
“There’s no action to speak of and no news cycle,” said Alex Preda, a professor of professions, markets and technology at King’s Business School in London.
“Bitcoin is a fringe phenomenon limited to the software engineering subculture and not a financial phenomenon.”
The first “real world” transaction occurred in May 2010 on a Bitcoin forum. According to a post on the bitcointalk.org forum, Laszlo Hanyecz, a Florida native, asked if anyone would order him two pizzas for 10,000 Bitcoins.
After buying two pizzas from Papa John’s worth around IDR 626,554 the price of each Bitcoin reached $0.0041. The pizza was the most expensive I had ever ordered.
Hanyecz made an impractical deal for the sake of it, telling The Sun, “I wanted to make pizza because, to me, it was free pizza. I mean, I coded this thing and mined Bitcoin, and I felt like I won the internet that day .”
Bitcoin wasn’t even worth one dollar until February 2011. However, in June 2011, the price of Bitcoin had jumped 30 times, reaching a value of IDR 458,052. In a hint of what was to come, the spike didn’t last long, with Bitcoin dropping to IDR 76,187.
Liquidity at the end of 2011 was low, and Bitcoin’s first competitor, Litecoin (LTC), appeared on the crypto scene in October 2011.
The introduction of LTC raised doubts among the community, with 90% drawdown testing completion. Despite a slight rebound, 2012 went smoothly, and BTC closed the year at around IDR 198,347.
Bitcoin Attracts Investors: 2013 to 2017
Bitcoin’s price trajectory began to change in 2013. Crypto stores, especially Mt. Gox handled 70% of all Bitcoin transactions at the end of 2014 and began accepting more users. As a result, Crypto has become more accessible.
The price follows the increase in adoption. Opened in 2013 at a price of IDR 198,347, BTC skyrocketed to reach IDR 15,272,541 in November 2013.
Success waned the following year after Mt. Tokyo-based Gox suffered a security breach with hackers. Mount Gox closed due to bankruptcy which caused Bitcoin to decline to around IDR 4,580,520 at the end of the year.
“The Mount Gox case generally destroyed investor confidence in BTC, and this affected sentiment towards crypto on a broader scale,” said Alex Faliushin, CEO of crypto lending platform CoinLoan.io.
Between 2015 and 2016, Bitcoin moved slowly, making price movements relatively muted. In the following years, more investors invested in this asset as increased media coverage began to attract the average retail customer.
BTC also reached IDR 15.27 million in early January 2017. BTC then doubled to IDR 61 million in August 2017.
Now, Bitcoin is finally starting to win over the doubters. Futures contracts began trading on the CME and many in the market felt Bitcoin was becoming a genuine financial asset class.
