KUALA LUMPUR (Dec 26): Bitcoin has gone from US$734 during Christmas in 2013 to an eye-watering US$50,970 in 2021.
During 2021, bitcoin did scale to its all-time high of US$69,000 before shedding its value, in line with the selloff in cryptocurrencies.
In a tweet Dec 25, Bitcoin Magazine, one of the original news and print magazine publishers covering Bitcoin and digital currencies, showed the comparisons beginning Christmas of 2013 right until 2021.
The year 2021 saw bitcoin surging to phenomenal levels.
A cursory glance on Wikipedia shows the bitcoin network came into existence with Satoshi Nakamoto mining the genesis block of bitcoin (block number 0), which had a reward of 50 bitcoins.
Embedded in the coinbase of this block was the text:
The Times Jan/03/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.
Wikipedia says the text refers to a headline in The Times published on Jan 3, 2009.
It says this note has been interpreted as both a timestamp of the genesis date and a derisive comment on the instability caused by fractional-reserve banking.
The first open source bitcoin client was released on Jan 9, 2009, hosted at SourceForge.
One of the first supporters, adopters, contributors to bitcoin and receiver of the first bitcoin transaction was programmer Hal Finney.
Finney downloaded the bitcoin software the day it was released, and received 10 bitcoins from Nakamoto in the world’s first bitcoin transaction on Jan 12, 2009 (bloc 170).
Other early supporters were Wei Dai — creator of bitcoin predecessor b-money, and Nick Szabo — creator of bitcoin predecessor bit gold.