Bitcoin is peer to peer virtual currency created by an anonymous Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. It allows you to send value over the wire anytime anywhere without a trusted middleman on a public network. It is decentralized and hence no one can censor you just like no one can stop you from using the internet as long as you have a connection to be online.
Let us look at the major milestones and events that happened along the way and what was the price of bitcoin at that time.
The Genesis: 2008-2010 — From a Whitepaper to a Pizza
The domain name “bitcoin.org” was registered by an unknown individual using a privacy protection service to hide their identity on August 18th, 2008. The domain is currently maintained by an open-source community of developers and volunteers who work on the Bitcoin Core software and related projects.
The first Bitcoin was mined on January 3, 2009, when the Genesis Block, also known as Block 0, was created. This historical event was performed by the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto. There was no price at that time. For a price to exist for any commodity has to be transaction between two individuals. Nakamoto mined the first 50 Bitcoins and continued to mine consistently throughout 2009, accumulating nearly 1 million Bitcoins before disappearing in 2011.
ALSO READA crypto insider’s guide to scams, frauds and hacks that fool millions
Other individuals like Hal Finney, Wei Dai and Nick Szabo, creators of earlier digital currency concepts, were also involved as early supporters of Bitcoin. The community initially comprised of programmers and enthusiasts who collaborated through online forums like Bitcointalk.org to refine and promote the new cryptocurrency.
The first ever Bitcoin transaction between two people occurs just days after the launch of the Bitcoin network. Satoshi Nakamoto sends 10 bitcoins to Hal Finney’s Bitcoin address. The first bitcoin wallet comes into existence in February 2009. Known as Bitcoin-Qt and although rudimentary its user-friendly interface would make it possible for early adopters to store and send bitcoins.
In its earliest days, Bitcoin was mined using Central Processing Units (CPUs) on ordinary personal computers. As the network grew and competition intensified, miners transitioned to using Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), which were more efficient for Bitcoin mining. The emergence of ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) miners around 2013 further revolutionized the industry, offering significantly greater efficiency for mining Bitcoin.
In March 2010, user “SmokeTooMuch” tried auctioning 10,000 BTC for $50, but no buyer was found. Laszlo Hanyecz a software developer paid forum user “jercos” 10,000 bitcoins for two Papa John’s pizzas delivered to his Florida home on May 22, 2010, which were worth about $41 at the time.
Mt. Gox was formed in 2006 as a site for trading the card game Magic: The Gathering and was repurposed by founder Jed McCaleb into a Bitcoin exchange in July 2010. The Bitcoin exchange officially launched on July 18, 2010, making it one of the first major platforms for trading Bitcoin. It quickly became the largest Bitcoin exchange in the world, processing a significant portion of almost 70% of global bitcoin transactions before its collapse in 2014. In March 2011, McCaleb sold the site to French developer Mark Karpelès.
The First Boom and Bust: 2011-2015 — Mt. Gox, Silk Road, and the First Halving
In February 2011, Bitcoin prices reached a dollar for the first time. The notion of assigning a monetary value to this innovative concept was a crucial step in its evolution. By June 2011 its price had gone upto 31$ per bitcoin. In June 2011, a user “allinvain” lost 500,000$ worth of his bitcoin by someone infiltrating his computer and stealing his bitcoins and he shared this experience on the forum. Prices dropped sharply. The allinvain hack exposed the urgent need for stronger Bitcoin security, spurring safer wallets, exchanges, and storage that shaped today’s mature cryptocurrency ecosystem.
ALSO READGreat bitcoin debate at Rs 1 crore: Who to believe – Billionaires or the professors?
In June 2011, Mt. Gox suffered its first major hack, sending Bitcoin’s price on the exchange crashing from $17 to cents and causing $8.75 million in losses. Though initially downplayed by CEO Mark Karpeles, the breach foreshadowed years of security failures, lawsuits, and scandals. Federal agents later seized $5 million from its U.S. account for licensing violations, and the company faced a $75 million lawsuit from former partner CoinLab.
The new bitcoin logo was made by anonymous “bitboy”, a white and slanted “B” on orange background. By November 2011, the price had fallen to 2$ per coin. In 2011, Namecoin became the first altcoin, launching its genesis block as a Bitcoin fork designed to function as both a cryptocurrency and a decentralized DNS.
On November 23rd, 2012 the first helvening event happens where the protocol rewards are reduced from 50 bitcoins to 25 bitcoins for the miner who writes the block. We have written more about halving here.)
In 2011 the dark web site Silk Route was launched where anyone could buy anything anonymously. Bitcoin is used a currency to buy and sell products and services on the website. On March 28th, 2013 Bitcoin crosses 1 billion in market capitalization for the first time.
On May 2013 the first bitcoin ATM is installed in Canada and thousands more followed. The Mastercoin ICO of July 2013 marked a turning point in blockchain history as one of the first token sales. By allowing investors to send Bitcoin in exchange for Mastercoin (later Omni) tokens, it introduced blockchain-based fundraising and set the stage for the ICO boom. Mastercoin’s vision which is building digital assets, smart contracts, and decentralized exchange features on Bitcoin pioneered ideas that shaped DeFi and the broader crypto ecosystem. By November 2013 Bitcoin prices cross a 1,000$ due to various factors such as interest from mainstream news media to celebrities and technologists being involved.
In October 2013 Ross Ulbricht is arrested as owner and founder of Silk Route and site is taken down. In 2015, he is sent to life imprisonment plus 40 years. Trump pardons Ross in 2025 as promised to the Libertarian movement during his election campaign.
The term “HODL” originated from a post on the Bitcointalk forum on December 18, 2013. A user named GameKyuubi made a drunken post titled “I AM HODLING” after Bitcoin’s price crashed from over $700 to under $500 in a matter of hours. In the post, he admitted he was bad at trading and instead of panic-selling, he would simply “hodl” (a typo for “hold”). That typo quickly became a meme in the Bitcoin community and was later reinterpreted as an acronym for “Hold On for Dear Life”, symbolizing the long-term mindset of crypto investors.
On February 2014 Mt.Gox files for bankruptcy. The exchange lost users’ 850,000 bitcoins worth 450 million at that time. The collapse of Mt. Gox and the subsequent arrest and conviction of former CEO Mark Karpeles led Japan to create the first formal regulations for cryptocurrency exchanges and virtual currencies. BY 2015 price of bitcoin crash to 130$ range.
In the meanwhile, Coinbase is started in 2012 by Brian Armstrong and today is the largest cryptocurrency exchange in US and is traded on the NYSE and is worth 80 billion dollars. Bitcoin started recovering after the Mt.Gox crash and more users are creating wallets and purchasing bitcoins and speculators and day traders are feasting on the bitcoin volatility. The high price and massive volatility is bringing more and more traders onto the ecosystem.
The ICO Frenzy: 2016-2019 — Ethereum, a $20k Peak, and the Crypto Winter
By 2016 when the second halving takes place, bitcoin prices are at 700$ and rising steadily but with volatile shocks downwards and upwards. Coinbase rewards go from 25 bitcoins to 12.5 bitcoins per block for the miner.
In 2013 Vitalik Buterin conceives Ethereum, raises funding though an ICO event in 2014 and by 2015 the network goes live. Ethereum establishes smart contracts and developers join in droves to build new projects as it uses a javascript type language for development which is much easier for developers than the script used in Bitcoin. It enabled ICOs which were like IPOs on steroids and capital could be invested into any project anywhere in the world using bitcoin or Ethereum that fueled the next major price boom or bubble. Ether went from less than a dollar to 1,300$ on January 2018 and then crashes to 80$ by December 2018. Bitcoin goes from 700$ in 2016 to 19,600$ in December 2017 to crash to 3,200$ by December 2018. Talk about some wild ride.
ALSO READTrump, crypto, and the presidency: A story of power, wealth, and survival
By this time every major news media is calling that this is the death of bitcoin. Famous economists and nobel prize winners claim it will become zero in price in no time. A number of fraudulent scamsters also entered the space to fool gullible investors as they feared on missing out on the next bitcoin to lose their investments to various projects. The US government, department of justice and SEC goes after a number of them for not being complaint and it was a depressing moment for investors till the next cycle.
At the same time with more money and ideas and entrepreneurs entered crypto and various problems are being solved and more innovation is happening in this space. Bitcoin can only do a block on an average of every 10 minutes which means only around seven transactions a second which makes it look slow compared to Mastercard or Visa which can do 1,000s of transactions per second. Lightning Network or side chain or off chain-scaling solutions are being developed and implemented from 2016. The battle for increasing block space to do more transactions divide the community and early evangelists causing bitcoin to fork into bitcoin cash supported by Roger Ver and original bitcoin with same block size supported by the bitcoin core community. Bitcoin cash today is only worth 11 billion and Bitcoin is worth 2 trillion dollars in market cap. Building network effects are hard and bitcoin is still the winner in the belief network effects. By 2018 rootstock platform brings smart contracts to bitcoin.
By this time mining becomes a major capex operation like data centers and tons of money is being raised to run mining operations. Hive is the first miner to go public on the Canadian stock exchange in 2017. By 2024 the top miners like Marathon, Riot, CleanSpark, Hut 8 etc. have raised more than 4 billion dollars. Riot alone has a market cap of 4 billion dollars today.
On the Ethereum side innovation creates NFTs, decentralized exchanges, decentralized lending and staking which creates a whole new market and brings in a new set of participants into the space and this sets the stage for the next boom in 2020-21 period and the halvening following that.
DeFi, NFTs, and the COVID Rally: 2020-2022 — The Summer of Yield and the Winter of Collapse
The halvening of 2020 makes rewards 6.25 bitcoins per block and prices continue to rise following the ICO fallout. Prices go from 4,000$ to 70,000$ by 2021. DeFi and NFTs are leading the boom this time around. Interest rates are close to zero following covid and lockdowns. Money is chasing yield and crypto lending, automated market making trading and staking are providing those higher yields.
Among its most transformative developments was the explosive rise of decentralized exchanges (DEXs). Platforms like Uniswap, Curve, and others shed their niche status and entered the mainstream with astonishing force. In May 2021 alone, total DEX trading volume soared to a staggering $173 billion, signaling that decentralized trading had begun to rival and even outpace traditional intermediaries
The concept of yield farming emerged as one of DeFi’s most powerful growth engines. On platforms like Compound, Aave, and later Curve and SushiSwap, users could lend or stake tokens to earn not just interest but also native governance tokens as rewards. In mid-2020, Compound kicked off the phenomenon with its COMP token, sparking what became known as the “DeFi Summer.” At its peak in 2021, billions of dollars flowed daily into these protocols as investors chased double- and sometimes triple-digit annual yields.
Liquidity incentives added fuel to the fire. Protocols like Uniswap pioneered automated market making (AMM), where anyone could provide liquidity to a pool of trading pairs and earn a share of fees. SushiSwap and others sweetened the deal by offering additional token rewards for liquidity providers. This model turned everyday users into market-makers, bootstrapping liquidity for decentralized exchanges at a scale no one thought possible. By May 2021, DEXs processed $173 billion in monthly volume, rivaling centralized exchanges.
While DeFi was transforming finance, NFTs exploded into mainstream culture. For the first time, digital scarcity became provable, enabling unique ownership of art, music, collectibles, and even virtual land.
In 2021, NFT trading volume surged to around $17–23 billion, with Beeple’s Everydays: The First 5000 Days selling at Christie’s for $69.3 million, and collections like CryptoPunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club fetching fortunes on secondary markets. This wasn’t just art—it was community and status. Owning a Bored Ape or a Punk became a social signal, like digital membership into exclusive clubs. At the same time, the metaverse economy was taking shape.
Platforms like Decentraland and The Sandbox began selling parcels of virtual land for millions of dollars, as brands, celebrities, and investors staked claims in virtual worlds. These spaces promised not only entertainment and identity but also new revenue streams through events, advertising, and digital commerce. The proliferation of NFT collections jumped too—growing from just 193 active collections in early 2021 to over 3,200 by year-end.
All of this unfolded against a unique macroeconomic backdrop. With interest rates near zero and unprecedented liquidity injections during COVID-19, traditional investments offered little yield. Capital naturally chased higher returns, and DeFi’s crypto-native yield opportunities provided an irresistible alternative. Meanwhile, NFTs attracted a whole new set of participants: artists, musicians, gamers, and collectors who weren’t motivated by yield but by creativity, community, and digital ownership.
Together, yield farming, liquidity incentives, NFTs, and the metaverse economy transformed crypto from a niche financial experiment into a cultural and economic movement. Bitcoin’s halving in 2020 provided the supply shock, but it was Ethereum’s innovations that gave the rally texture and depth. By late 2021, Bitcoin had soared from $4,000 in March 2020 to nearly $70,000, while Ethereum climbed from under $100 to over $4,800, fueled by the energy of this dual engine: DeFi’s financial revolution and NFTs’ cultural revolution.
This price boom came to an end by 2022 with two major incidents. One was inflations and monetary tightening by the federal reserve and the other was the collapse of Terra-Luna.
The algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD (UST), designed to hold a $1 peg via arbitrage with its sister token LUNA, collapsed in May 2022. UST lost its peg and spiraled down to pennies, wiping out $40+ billion in value within days. The shock devastated investor confidence in DeFi and triggered forced liquidations across the crypto market. The Terra collapse exposed the fragility of highly leveraged players; Celsius Network (a large crypto lender) froze withdrawals and later filed for bankruptcy. Voyager Digital another centralized lender also collapsed. Three Arrows Capital (3AC), a major hedge fund, blew up after heavy losses on LUNA and leveraged bets. Each collapse spread contagion through lenders, exchanges, and counterparties, draining liquidity from the system.
The Great Reset: 2023-2025 — The FTX Crash and the Rise of the ETFs
Just as the market was trying to stabilize, revelations emerged that FTX, one of the largest global exchanges, had misused customer deposits to prop up its trading arm Alameda Research. In November 2022, FTX imploded almost overnight, losing billions in customer funds. The collapse shattered trust across the entire industry, accelerating Bitcoin’s fall to around $16,000; its lowest point since late 2020. By late 2022, investors realized much of the prior boom was built on leverage, unsustainable yields, and opaque balance sheets. Institutional appetite dried up, retail investors fled, and forced selling created a downward spiral. Combined with Fed tightening, this reset crypto valuations to pre-boom levels.
This did not stop innovation and the crypto market was waiting for the next halvening in 2024 and along came the rise of Trump for his second presidency. Biden and his SEC had crippled the crypto industry with regulatory hurdles. The Trump campaign was supported by the crypto vertical. In fact, his single largest vertical contributor was the crypto industry. And true to his loyal supporters, after winning he appointed a crypto czar and also appointed a crypto friendly SEC chairman. The president and his family themselves involved with stablecoins and NFTs.
Another development in this cycle was the approval of the bitcoin ETFs. ETFs allow the institutions investors and pension funds to invest into crypto as this solved the custody problem for them. In six months, the top Bitcoin ETFs had an aggregate AUM of $42 billion, something the Gold ETF achieved in six years. The price rose after the court verdict from $27,000 in October 2023 to $45,000 until the first ETF approval date. From the first ETF trading date of January 2024, it went to $70,000 by March 2024.
The next big thing was various companies starting to hold bitcoin or other crypto in their treasury. Microstrategy and Saylor went from having 250 million worth of crypto in their treasury to 60 billion dollars worth of crypto in their treasury by 2025. And the market was willing to give them double the value to a market cap of 120 billion dollars and various other companies are following suit to boost stock prices. The stablecoin (GENIUS) act and proliferation of stablecoins is another catalyst this cycle. Tether and Circle and other stablecoins have ended up being the seventh largest buyer of US government debt. The whole ecosystem is changing as US has decided to ease the formation of companies and also not be rigid in their stance against cryptocurrencies.
The Road Ahead: A Million-Dollar Hope?
I am not a soothsayer and I do not have a crystal ball to see the future. But I do believe we need to study history and study patterns. A pattern that occurred in the past doesn’t mean it should occur again but when a pattern occurs at the same time every four years we should take notice. Correlation does not mean causation. With that in mind I believe something will happen, most likely the treasury companies busting on leaverage and having to sell their holdings and then so will everyone else in one shot and that or something else should cause prices to correct and come to sane levels. If Hitler studied history and Napolean’s fate he would have thought or planned better when he tried to take Russia and that one campgain wrecked him and his army.
And after that correction in 2026 we will see the next rise till the next halvening and beyond to hopefully touch a million dollars in price by 2028 or 2032. That is my hope or my guesstimate based on my fundamental thesis that bitcoin is better money than gold and it is digital and decentralized. So, it should overtake the market cap of gold. In order for that to happen either gold prices must go down and bitcoin has to become a million. Till then study, understand and then invest for the long term.
Nithin Eapen is a technologist and entrepreneur with a deep passion for finance, cryptocurrencies, prediction markets and technology. You can write to him at neapen@gmail.com
Disclaimer – The website managers, its employee(s), and contributors/writers/authors of articles have or may have an outstanding buy or sell position or holding in the securities, options on securities or other related investments of issuers and/or companies discussed therein. The content of the articles and the interpretation of data are solely the personal views of the contributors/ writers/authors. Investors must make their own investment decisions based on their specific objectives, resources and only after consulting such independent advisors as may be necessary.
About the Author
