Hello guys,
I know this topic isn’t new, but sometimes you come across some well prepared graphics or websites that remind you once again of how absolutely astonishing the journey is that Bitcoin has taken so far over the last 13.5 years. Years and years ago, if somebody said to you that he is about to write software that is able to produce something like a digital coin, which then will outcompete any and all existing asset classes for over a decade in terms of yield, it would at best have evoked a weary smile from others. At the latest when the question by which this mysterious coin is backed, would have been answered with: “mining!“ With what? The expended energy to solve algorithmic riddles, which in turn promise the solver a fixed amount of X Bitcoin as a reward, the so called coinbase transaction.
All of this would have sounded very absurd to almost all of us. That is not the case anymore as a lot of folks in this forum have developed over the years a decent understanding of the technology. As I was just dealing with a couple of topics concerning crypto, I came across an interesting website and, despite being aware of this already, thought that this is just still incredible to look at and recap once more:
Be aware that these are logarithmic scales. In order to present the data arithmetically, you would probably need an x-thousand inch screen to properly mark the data points!
Information about the very first official Bitcoin prices are not to be verified that easily. Perhaps someone from here can confirm or correct what I found. Based on some sources I found, the prices varied between
$0.0008 and
$0.00099.
This is why in the first screenshot it says one could have turned a $1 investment into $28,466,600, if the investment had been made at the earliest possible point in time ($1/$0.0008=1250 BTC * ~$23,000). The numbers don’t match precisely as the prices are volatile these days, but it’s roughly correct.
The sources about this are exciting and what I find quite frequently is that a first trade happened based on the so called "
New Liberty Standard", which is a fixed amount of X Bitcoin per $1.
How exactly price developments affected the standard and how deviations from it were accounted for, since it was an open market by then, is beyond my knowledge.
It remains to be said that
a first trade took place by the end of 2009 between Bitcointalk users (the forum was launched on 22nd November,2009), which resulted in 5,050 Bitcoin being exchanged for $5.02 via PayPal.
This equates to less than a USD cent per Bitcoin.
If you invested $1 in Bitcoin 13 years ago, you could have turned that $1 into roughly $3.6 million. If you had been around for even longer, like 13.4 years ago, you could have turned $1 into the above mentioned (in the screenshot) $28.4 million (depending on the exact point in time as Bitcoin is volatile these days).
I have to admit there is a bit of wistfulness inside me. Just imagine if you bought $10 worth of Bitcoin and locked them away with Check Lock Time Verify (CLTV) for 10 years. That wouldn’t have bothered you at all, just a $10 gamble for fun. And you could have invested another $10 to play around and trade with them as Bitcoin continues to exist or even grow.
But if locked away those $10 worth of Bitcoin, the time afterwards wouldn’t have passed without pain. As you would not have been able to access those coins, you might have thrown your laptop out the window out of desperation, condemning yourself from being so “naive“ to make such long-term considerations and now not being able to realize any gains:
However, one quickly forgets that you would have supposedly sold the coins way too early anyway instead of patiently waiting for all those peaks without pushing the sell button. Additionally, back at the time there was only the nLockTime function available and
CLTV was only added by the end of 2015 .
The first screenshot I provided was the first half of the website. Now I am going to provide you with the second half:
What I do particularly like about that website is the little greeting in red that the creator left for Peter Schiff!
Indeed we had an inverse price development of Bitcoin and gold over the last two years provided in this overview. The year 2022 was certainly not a good one, but I am optimistic now since we started 2023 at $16,500 and despite all the turmoil and mediocre or even bad news we are still well positioned with
33%.
Now let’s see what the future holds for us. Or should I say HODLS for us?
What do you guys think about this recap and was it good to once more provide you with a reminder how remarkable Bitcoin’s journey has been so far?
I am optimistically looking forward to what’s coming and close this post with: HODL on, dear friends!
