Initial Bitcoin investors received a windfall when the cryptocurrency soared to an all-time high in April.
It was at this point that many who had not invested in it before began to perceive an opportunity to secure and accelerate the growth of their assets.
However, because there was little knowledge regarding digital assets at the time, the early investments were equally hazardous.
Those who took risks, on the other hand, were richly rewarded. Bitcoin, which already held the distinction of being the world’s oldest cryptocurrency, soared to unprecedented levels of popularity as a result of this.
Even though it is a volatile currency, it looks to have stabilized at $40,000 (about Rs. 29.7 lakhs) for the time being, according to market analysts. Look at the more than a decade-long journey that Bitcoin has taken to get where it is now. Know about Top 10 Bitcoin alternatives in 2021
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Bitcoin History
After Bitcoin was initially suggested in 2008, there was a great deal of mystery around it, the most notable of which was the identity of its developer, Satoshi Nakamoto, a pseudonymous individual whose true name is still unknown.
Nakamoto circulated a document titled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System on a cryptography email group in which he claimed to be the writer.
This drew a great deal of attention and sparked a flurry of discussion about it online. As of 7 p.m. IST on August 2, the price of bitcoin in India was Rs. 29.18 lakhs (about).
The Bitcoin program was first made accessible to the general public in 2009. It was at this point that mining, the process by which new Bitcoins are produced and exchanged on the blockchain, got underway.
The value of Bitcoin was determined the next year, in 2013. Until then, Bitcoin had only been mined; no one had ever exchanged it, making it impossible to establish the true worth of the coin.
On May 22, 2010, programmer Laszlo Hanyecz exchanged 10,000 Bitcoins for two pizzas, a transaction that went viral. If he had been able to manage his pizza hunger, those Bitcoins would have been worth $389 million (about Rs. 2,890 crores) at the time of writing. At the very least, the episode resulted in “Bitcoin Pizza Day.”
The domination of whatever market Bitcoin had grabbed by that time was first called into question in 2011.
Some Bitcoin competitors, such as Namecoin and Litecoin, began to emerge around the same time. These competing currencies claimed to provide enhanced services, such as faster transaction speeds, among other things.
According to CoinMarketCap, a market research website, there are more than 11,000 cryptocurrencies in circulation at the moment of writing.
This phase in Bitcoin’s history has been marked by some of the most turbulent moments in its existence.
Bitcoin’s value plummeted for the first time in 2013, three years after the cryptocurrency was first priced. Bitcoin had already surpassed the $1,000 (approximately Rs. 74,380) barrier by that point, but the price continued to rapidly decline, eventually falling to around $300. (roughly Rs. 22,310).
Mt.Gox, the world’s largest Bitcoin exchange, was taken offline unexpectedly in January of this year. It also caused the disappearance of 850,000 Bitcoins, and the owners of these Bitcoins were never informed of what happened to their Bitcoins.
On March 20, 2014, Mt. Gox said that it had discovered 199999.99 Bitcoins in an old digital wallet, bringing the total number of bitcoins that the company had lost down to 650,000 from 850,000 before. The investigation into the incident is still ongoing.
Bitcoins recovered their $1,000 (about Rs. 74,380) worth for the first time in 2015.
The next year, Ethereum emerged as a significant competitor to Bitcoin’s market dominance. However, Bitcoin has grown in popularity to the point that it was approaching near to the $10,000 (approximately Rs. 7.4 lakhs) level by the end of 2017.
More individuals were becoming involved in the ecosystem and investing their money in it. As of the end of this year, the total market capitalization of all cryptocurrency currencies had increased from $11 billion (approximately Rs. 81,820 crores) to more than $300 billion (roughly Rs. 22,31,640 crores).
Current Status
A further fall in Bitcoin’s value occurred at the start of 2018 when many nations took efforts to strengthen regulatory control of cryptocurrencies.
Bitcoin’s value dropped by more than 80 percent during this period. Even in India, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) published a notice to prohibit banks from engaging in cryptocurrency trading or enabling cryptocurrency transactions.
This year has also seen the occurrence of one of the largest cryptocurrency heists in history. By defrauding investors, the BitConnect scam was able to siphon off $2 billion (approximately Rs. 14,880 crores).
Mid-days
The beginning of the year 2019 was rather calm. Bitcoin, on the other hand, was approaching $8,000 (approximately Rs. 5.9 lakhs) by May.
The company then suffered a nearly $1,000 (approximately Rs. 74,380) loss in June, only to recover to $14,000 (about Rs. 10.4 lakhs) by the end of July. This year has been a reasonably successful one for cryptocurrency.
By the next year, during the Pandemic of 2009, Bitcoin was still seen as a fringe investment by the likes of Warren Buffet, who declared that it has “no value.”
But by the end of the year, Bitcoin had nearly doubled in value, hitting an all-time high of more than $28,000. (roughly Rs. 20.8 lakhs). In May 2020, the Supreme Court of India struck down the Reserve Bank of India’s cryptocurrency circular.
So far this year, Bitcoin has been on a rollercoaster ride of its own. During its early months, it received the support of popular Elon Musk, who subsequently switched his support to Dogecoin after environmentalists expressed worry about Bitcoin mining’s impact on the environment.
Bitcoin saw a huge drop in value in May after reaching a record high of $65,000 (approximately Rs. 48.3 lakhs) in April. As of Monday, August 2, the stock had recovered to some amount and was trading at about $40,000 (roughly Rs. 29.7 lakhs) per share.
