From bouncy baby to troubled teenager – Forbes Advisor UK

Was conceived in 2008 and launched in 2009bitcoin is the world’s first and largest cryptocurrency.

Back in 2010, a single bitcoin could be bought for approx £0.07. Today, the value is more than 24,000,000% higher.

But it has not all been gains. In the following years, we have seen prices peak as high as £56,000but we have also seen prices fall by as much as £20,000 in as little as three weeks.

Here’s a brief history of bitcoin’s biggest price movements and milestones along the way, from thousandths of a penny to tens of thousands of pounds.

Remember that investing in cryptocurrency is purely speculative and all your capital is at risk – you may not get any of your money back. The cryptocurrency market is unregulated in the UK and you will not be entitled to compensation if something goes wrong.

Bitcoin begins

One of the most interesting aspects of bitcoin is that no one knows who created it.

The 2008 whitepaper that laid out how the cryptocurrency would work – Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer electronic cash system – was written by a person or group of people using the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto.

There have been several investigations to determine the true identity of bitcoin’s creator, but while several computer scientists and cryptographers are believed to have been bitcoin’s creator(s), no one has so far been able to identify Nakamoto with any certainty.

Beyond bitcoin

Bitcoin sparked the birth of an entire market of alternative cryptocurrencies in the 2011 when Namecoin is created the world’s first ‘altcoin’.

While bitcoin was created to facilitate decentralized payments, Namecoin was created as a decentralized alternative to DNS – which is essentially the “phone book” of the internet, translating website addresses like Forbes.com to their corresponding IP addresses to route traffic.

Litecoin follows closely behind, and is able to confirm transactions four times faster than bitcoin.

Within 10 years, thousands of altcoins will have been created – including bitcoin’s biggest competitor, Ethereum (ETH).

Bitcoin stabilizes, then rallies

2013 marks perhaps the most stable period in bitcoin’s history, holding its value around £100 for most of the year before spiking for the very first time in the winter.

Bitcoin rises from around £105 in October 2013 to around £950 in April 2014.

Bitcoin breaks £1k

The cryptocurrency hits first £1000 in March 2017. By the end of the year, it had risen to more than £13,000 as the currency makes its debut on the futures market, allowing investors to commit to buying an agreed amount of the asset at an agreed price on an agreed date in the future.

Four months later, the number has fallen by around two-thirds to approximately £5000. This follows a period in which Google announces it will ban cryptocurrency advertising, German researchers discover links to child abuse images hidden in Bitcoin’s blockchain, and thieves in Iceland make off with 600 bitcoin mining rigs.

Commenters respond with headlines like “Bitcoin is ridiculous. Blockchain is Dangerous”, and payment platform Stripe ends support for bitcoin payments.

Prices waver at these levels until late December 2018 before you fall around £2000 – £3000 for the next few months.

During this time, the 30-year-old CEO of Canada’s largest crypto exchange, Quadringa, dies and leaves £145,000,000 owes around 115,000 customers locked in a bitcoin wallet.

The first major derivatives exchange to offer bitcoin futures, Cboe Global Markets, is also dropping the cryptocurrency.

But March 2019 marking the beginning of a short-lived bitcoin bull run, with prices almost reaching £9,000 by the summer – the highest value to that point.

This is despite claims by a crypto index and ETF provider that 95% of reported bitcoin trading volume is fake. Bitwise Asset Management’s analysis of 81 exchanges claims daily trading volumes are closer 222 million pounds than 4.8 billion pounds reported by CoinMarketCap.

Bitcoin Explodes

What follows is a relative plateau for prices. During this time, a high-profile bitcoin scam sees celebrities’ Twitter accounts hacked. Targeted accounts, including the likes of US Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama, send out tweets asking for cryptocurrency donations.

After September 2020, bitcoin’s value explodes. Within six months, the cryptocurrency reaches a new record high of around £43,000. Owner of Tesla Motors, Elon Musk, announces that his company will accept cryptocurrency as payment.

IN May 2021but – a month after the peak – bitcoin is losing around £20,000 of its value, falls to around £24,000. The losses came after reports that China would crack down on crypto mining and trading with new regulations.

Prices are starting to rise again July 2021rises to £35,000 at the end of August, before you fell to £31,000 the month after. Prices rise to an all-time high at £56,000 reached in November before a downturn that will last January 2022 when prices hit £25,000.

Winter conditions

A short-term rise takes prices back to £35,000 of April 2022before a downturn into a so-called ‘crypto winter’ which currently has bitcoin’s value down to around £17,000 – 51% down from the start of the year and down 31% from the same period last year.

Few would care to speculate with any confidence on how bitcoin’s price will move in the coming days, weeks and months. A look at history shows the dramatic twists and turns it has taken – and it seems fair to suggest that investors in this or any other cryptocurrency should brace themselves for a bumpy ride.