[Bitcoin Price Hits $10,000 For The First Time In 2020 Up 40% YTD
Oludare Padilla
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Bitcoin Price Hits $10,000 For The First Time In 2020 Up 40% YTD
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Bitcoin famously has a maximum of 21 million coins that can ever be created. In the face of this fixed supply, an ever-increasing demand can send the cryptocurrency soaring. Given these dynamics, speculators have rushed into the space to take advantage of the anticipated price appreciation.
The New Liberty Standard Exchange recorded the first exchange of Bitcoin for dollars in late 2009. Users on the BitcoinTalk forum traded 5,050 bitcoins for $5.02 via PayPal, making the first price mediated through an exchange a bargain basement price of $0.00099 per bitcoin. In other words, the price was about one-tenth of one cent.
From there, it was just a week until Bitcoin was back at $68, as the bottom fell out. But then a week later, it had doubled again and traded north of $150. After the strong trading action in April and May, Bitcoin spent June and July settling down. Surely this was the peak of insanity for Bitcoin volatility.
It was a perilously quick rise for Bitcoin that became self-sustaining. As the news spread, more people rushed in to buy, sending the price seemingly ever higher. But Bitcoin finished the year off its highest levels, ending the breakthrough year of 2017 at $13,850.
After this auspicious start to the year, there seemed to be only one place to go: down. In May, China warned cryptocurrency buyers that it was going to put pressure on the industry, and the price of Bitcoin began to drop. The country also announced that it was prohibiting financial institutions and payment platforms from transacting in cryptocurrency.
Later, in September, China announced that all cryptocurrency transactions were illegal and that even foreign websites offering such services to Chinese traders were prohibited. The market shrugged off that news, and by October the currency was back over $60,000 and on its way to a new all-time high, at $68,789, on Nov. 10, 2021.
Late in 2021, the Federal Reserve announced that it would begin to taper its bond purchases, slowly draining liquidity from financial markets. With inflation roaring at multi-decade highs, the central bank wanted to tamp down rising prices. The 10-year Treasury rate began to rise, as investors began pricing in the prospect that the Fed would raise interest rates in the near future.
The price picked up in 2023, gaining more than 50 percent through mid-June, amid a broader rally in tech stocks. Bitcoin traded for around $26,000 as of mid-June 2023 despite a crackdown by the Securities and Exchange Commission on the crypto industry. It bounced around but was still near $27,000 by late September, before it began to break higher to end the year.
As interest rates seemed to be peaking in October 2023, Bitcoin started rising again. It ran to more than $42,000 to close out the year, amid rumors that the SEC would finally allow the creation of Bitcoin ETFs.
After some months of speculation, the SEC officially permitted Bitcoin to be traded in an ETF, and 11 fund managers were allowed to list funds. Bitcoin ETFs then began trading on Jan. 11, 2024. Bitcoin peaked at nearly $49,000 in the days leading up to the announcement, but cooled somewhat in the weeks following.
Money has poured into the newly created Bitcoin ETFs in early 2024, helping to push the price of Bitcoin to a new all-time high above $73,000 in March. The price of Bitcoin has retreated somewhat since then and trades around $63,000 as of late April.
For 15 minutes at the airport, I refreshed the price of bitcoin over and over, watching as it gained and lost hundreds of dollars in a matter of minutes. I called out the price fluctuations breathlessly to my wife, who gently encouraged me not to be an idiot, before returning to her magazine.
She was in good company. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon recently called bitcoin a "fraud" and suggested people who buy it are "stupid." Warren Buffett called bitcoin a "mirage" in 2014 and warned investors to "stay away."
And yet bitcoin has climbed more than tenfold since Buffett's warning. Earlier this month, one college friend casually told me over drinks he'd made tens of thousands of dollars investing in another cryptocurrency. He said he hoped it would be worth enough one day to buy a house.
There's a long list of factors people may point to in an attempt to explain this. Regulators have taken a hands-off approach to bitcoin in certain markets. Dozens of new hedge funds have launched this year to trade cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. The Nasdaq and Chicago Mercantile Exchange plan to let investors trade bitcoin futures, which may attract more professional investors.
Yet a key reason the price of bitcoin keeps going up is, well, because it keeps going up. Small investors like yours truly have a fear of missing out on a chance to get rich quick. And when the value of your bitcoin doubles in a week, as it did for me, it's easy to think you're a genius. But you can get burned assuming it will keep skyrocketing.
Some investors have likened the bitcoin hype to the dot-com bubble. Others, like Dimon, have said it's even "worse" than the Dutch tulip mania from the 1600s, considered one of the most famous bubbles ever.
As Buffett put it back in 2014, "the idea that [bitcoin] has some huge intrinsic value is just a joke in my view." Bitcoin is not backed by a company's earnings, or the strength of a government and rule of law. There's also no interest or dividends.
Or at least that was the promise when it was created in 2009. The surge and volatility of bitcoin this year may be great for those who invested early, but it undermines bitcoin's viability as a currency.
Right now, I can use my bitcoin holdings to pay for purchases at Overstock (OSTBP), or book a hotel on Expedia (EXPE). But if I use bitcoin to buy $25 worth of socks on Overstock today, and the price of bitcoin quadruples next week, I'll feel like those socks actually cost me $100. Then again, if bitcoin crashes, at least I'll always have the socks.
Bitcoin is built on the blockchain, a public ledger containing all the transaction data from anyone who uses bitcoin. Transactions are added to "blocks" or the links of code that make up the chain, and each transaction must be recorded on a block.
Today, the leading exchange is offered by Coinbase, a startup that has raised more than $200 million from a number of top tier venture capital firms. Square (SQ), the payments service, is also rolling out a bitcoin product.
There are also bitcoin ATMs in scattered bodegas and convenience stores around the country, through companies like Coinsource. The ATMs let you exchange bitcoin for cash, or vice versa by scanning a QR code from the digital wallet application on your phone.
With Coinbase, you must first give the app permission to connect to your bank account. As with other stock trading applications, you pay a small fee for each transaction, buying and selling. But the transaction can take significantly longer.
My original $100 bitcoin purchase won't officially be completed on Coinbase until Friday, more than a week after the transaction. The price I bought it at remains the same, but I won't be able to sell at the earliest until Friday.
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The BitcoinTalk forum went online in late 2009 and soon enough one regular proposed the idea of an exchange where people could buy and sell Bitcoins for fiat currency. Keep in mind that this was when the block reward was 50 BTC and there were very few people mining.
The BitcoinTalk forum member NewLibertyStandard set up New Liberty Standard Exchange, and another forum user - Sirius - sent him 5050 BTC in exchange for $5.02 through PayPal. This puts the first recorded price at which Bitcoin exchanged hands at $0.00099/BTC.
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