The price of leading cryptocurrency Bitcoin BTC/USD continues to hit new all-time highs, breaking several records since the 2024 presidential election.
Investors who bought earlier this year or ahead of the election have generated strong profits, but nowhere near the gains that investors got being early believers in the cryptocurrency.
What Happened: In October 2008, pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto published a whitepaper titled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.” The whitepaper provided many key details and explained why Bitcoin was created.
In January 2009, Nakamoto mined the genesis block of the first 50 Bitcoins and the cryptocurrency was officially born.
When Bitcoin was released, there were only two ways to get the cryptocurrency: mine the Bitcoin yourself or use a peer-to-peer transaction.
Bitcointalk, a forum created by Nakamoto to host discussions on Bitcoin, was used for several transactions. The transactions were deemed risky at the time because they required trust from both parties and were mostly anonymous.
In October 2009, one of the first-ever recognized Bitcoin transactions happened when a Finnish computer science student sold 5,050 Bitcoin for $5.02 (which represented a value of $0.0009 for each Bitcoin), according to Forbes. The transaction took place on PayPal.
Less than a year later in May 2010, one of the most famous Bitcoin transactions of all time — and what is widely believed to be the first retail transaction — took place when programmer Laszlo Hanyecz sought out a person to buy him pizza in exchange for Bitcoin. A person in England subsequently spent around $41 to buy pizza from Papa John’s for Hanyecz in exchange for 10,000 Bitcoin. This represented a value of around $0.0041 for each Bitcoin.
It wasn’t until 2011 and after the launch of several major crypto exchanges that the cryptocurrency hit a price of $1.
In 2021, Bitcoin hit an all-time high of $68,789.63 as part of a year that saw increased interest in the leading cryptocurrency and many other cryptocurrencies.
In 2022, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies fell in value and interest with several notable cryptocurrency trading platforms declaring bankruptcy.
The approval of Bitcoin ETFs in 2024 has led to increased interest in Bitcoin once again and a surge in the price of the leading cryptocurrency.
Fast forward to today and Bitcoin is trading near the $100,000 milestone with a current price of $98,093.47 at the time of writing. Bitcoin hit a new all-time high of $99,014.21 earlier on Nov. 21, 2024.
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Investing $1 in Bitcoin: Using the early transactions referenced above, a hypothetical investment in the early days could have provided quite the return for its holder, or in this case a “hodler.”
A $1 investment in Bitcoin at the time of the first transaction on PayPal would have netted 1,111.1111 Bitcoin. That investment would be worth $108,992,743.36 today based on a price of $98,093.47 for Bitcoin at the time of writing.
In contrast, a $1 investment in Bitcoin at the time of the Bitcoin-pizza transaction could have bought 243.9024 Bitcoin. That investment would be worth $23,925,232.76 today based on the same price of $98,093.47 for Bitcoin at the time of writing.
While investing in Bitcoin today might never be worth millions of dollars in the future, the hypothetical investment illustrated the large increase in the value of the leading cryptocurrency over time. Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood has a price target of $3.8 million for Bitcoin by 2030.
A fixed supply of 21 million Bitcoin could also lead to further increases in the asset’s price as more people seek to take positions.
Many have predicted Bitcoin’s death over the years, but the cryptocurrency remains the leader in the space and has a market capitalization of over $1 trillion today.
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This article was previously published by Benzinga and has been updated.
Image created using artificial intelligence via Midjourney.
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