It appears that Bitfinex’s founder was Raphael Nicolle, a Frenchman who launched the exchange way back in 2012. Bitcoin itself went live only three years earlier, and the infamous Mt. Gox only the year before. So, for all intents and purposes, Bitfinex is probably the earliest cryptocurrency exchange still operating.

The real surprise here is that not only did Bitfinex kick off trading back in 2012, but its popularity and position as a crypto pillar have only increased with the passage of time. When Nicolle launched Bitfinex, he understood that those looking for simple BTC buying and selling already had Mt. Gox and other peer to peer methods for trade. To entice a different and perhaps more sophisticated crowd of traders, he launched Bitfinex as a leveraged trading destination.

Before Bitfinex, there wasn’t a legitimate and dedicated place to margin trade crypto. The move worked – Bitfinex was a hit from early on. However, over the years, Bitfinex has been hit by theft after theft, with never-ending technical glitches being the bitter icing on the cake.

As reported by CoinDesk, Bitfinex was born out of the ashes of another exchange called Bitcoinica. Predating Bitfinex by about a year, Bitcoinica was a flaming wreck of an exchange that was hacked twice within the span of mere weeks for 61,000 BTC. That amount, worth about $300,000 at the time, is worth more than $600,000,000 million today.