It's official—Bitcoin has survived the Trough of Sorrow [1][2]. Take a look at Bitcoin's price (BTC) for it's full lifetime [3]:

BTC price since birth

Look familiar? It should. It's a spitting image of The Startup Curve [4]:

The Startup Curve

Uncanny, right?

Some of you will still remember the abrupt rise and fall of Bitcoin back in 2012 (yeah, it really was four years ago). But BTC didn't die—it was heads down, building.

Brief History: BTC first gained tiny amounts of traction through 2011 and 2012 then in November 2013 got it's TechCrunch of Initiation. Except, with BTC, it wasn't a TechCrunch of Initiation, it was a CNN, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, New York Times and hundreds of others of Initiation. Bitcoin was big news. Then the price tumbled after the massive spike. People largely forgot about Bitcoin (except big banks and fintech companies trying to figure out what to do about their impending doom). Things moved on.

Some blame the Chinese Bitcoin buyers for the crash, others just thought BTC was tainted from the start. But, alas, after burning through four years in the Trough of Sorrow—with companies dutifully integrating BTC into the normal economy—Bitcoin has emerged with, what startups would call, product market-fit.

Celebrate

Some festivities are in order. For me, I've fired up the old GPU mining rigs in Deepgram's AI Lab. It's gettin' hot in here. ;)

[1] Hacker News: The Startup Curve

[2] Shirlaws Coaching: From Paul Graham's Trough of Sorrow to Infinity and Beyond

[3] Coinbase

[4] Forbes: Making it Through the Trough of Sorrow

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