Happy 11th Birthday Bitcoin! Whitepaper Released 11 Years Ago Jonathan Ganor 2019-10-31 07:48:55 742 views

A Brief History and Celebration of Bitcoin's 11 Years in Existence

The 31st of October may be Halloween for most folk, but there is yet another reason to remember the date. 11 years ago, at the height of the U.S. subprime mortgage financial crisis, Bitcoin's white paper was released.

The mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto published Bitcoin's white paper on metzdowd.com, a cryptography mailing list website. The white paper titled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System quickly gained interest in the cypherpunk and cryptography circles.

Nakamoto later released the Bitcoin open source software in January 2009. The first person to receive Bitcoin was Hal Finney, a computer scientist & cryptography enthusiast.

A Bit About Satoshi Nakamoto

Satoshi Nakamoto's identity remains unknown to this day. Some have suspected Dorian Nakamoto, Hal Finney, & Nick Szabo to be the man behind the moniker. Nick Szabo was the founder of smart contracts & "bit gold" a predecessor of Bitcoin.

There were a few individuals who have declared themselves to be Satoshi Nakamoto. This includes Craig Wright who is the figurehead behind Bitcoin SV and James Bilal Khalid Caan of SatoshiNrh.

Satoshi Nakamoto's last message on the popular forum he created, Bitcointalk was dated December 12th 2010. It is believed that the email associated with him & his P2P Foundation profile have been compromised.





Bitcoin's Price Evolution

The price of Bitcoin is known for its volatility, but a look at the charts mostly shows steady growth.

- October 31st, 2010 - 1 BTC = $0.125

- October 31st, 2011 - 1 BTC = $3.12

- October 31st, 2012 - 1 BTC = $10

- October 31st, 2013 - 1 BTC = $200

- October 31st, 2014 - 1 BTC = $340

- October 31st, 2015 - 1 BTC = $312

- October 31st, 2016 - 1 BTC = $697

- October 31st, 2017 - 1 BTC = $6,447

- October 31st, 2018 - 1 BTC = $6,336

- October 31st, 2019 - 1 BTC = $9,142





Bitcoin Forks

Over the year's disagreements rose in the world of Bitcoin. Without the guidance of Satoshi Nakamoto or anyone truly at the helm, many splits known as forks have occurred. The exact number of Bitcoin forks is roughly 70, with most of them defunct.

A few Bitcoin forks have succeeded to some degree. This includes Bitcoin Cash which forked on August 2017, Bitcoin Gold which forked on October 2017 & Bitcoin SV, which forked from Bitcoin Cash in November 2018.

Nearly every hard fork rewarded Bitcoin holders with an equal amount of the forked currency to their holdings.

Bitcoin & Cryptocurrencies

Bitcoin was the first fully functioning decentralized cryptocurrency. As such, there have been many attempts to improve on or replicate its code. Some of the best known are Ethereum, Dogecoin, Litecoin & Ripple's XRP but thousands were released through the years.

October 2012 - 4 cryptocurrencies traded.

October 2013 - 32 cryptocurrencies traded.

October 2014 - 547 cryptocurrencies traded.

October 2015 - 673 cryptocurrencies traded.

October 2016 - 714 cryptocurrencies traded.

October 2017 - 1249 cryptocurrencies traded.

October 2018 - 2081 cryptocurrencies traded.

Today there are over 3048 different cryptocurrencies online.

Bitcoin & the Future

As per writing this, Bitcoin is currently trading at $9,100. October has been a pretty volatile month for Bitcoin. We've seen lows of $7488 and highs of $9,800.





The Bitcoin market is maturing and expanding as of late. Bakkt's Bitcoin Futures launched last month and Bitcoin Options will be rolled out in December. As more regulation enters the world of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, financial institutions are starting to take notice.

While Bitcoin has yet to break its all-time high of $20,000, it is clear that it is here to stay. The world's first cryptocurrency will likely remain relevant as long as there are cryptocurrencies. While there have been attempts to regulate & even ban Bitcoin in some jurisdictions, as a decentralized entity it isn't truly feasible.

One can assume that we might even tell our children "I heard of Bitcoin back in 2012" someday.





If you have more information on the early days of Bitcoin & cryptocurrencies, drop us a line at Contact@crypto-markets.news





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