Bitcoin Hits US$50K. How Did We Get Here?

Fifty is always a milestone worth celebrating. A batsman waves his bat politely to the crowd after notching his fiftieth run, a couple throws a big soirée to celebrate fifty years of (mostly) happy marriage, 12 year old me celebrates after opening the Christmas card from Nana and seeing a magical violet $50 note slide out onto the floor. Fifty is always a BIG deal.  In the last week, the increasingly relevant phenomenon Bitcoin has had its own fifty to celebrate, hitting US$50,000 for the first time. It’s been a wild journey into the public consciousness for the ground-breaking cryptocurrency, from its creation all the way back in 2009 by the still to this day anonymous Satoshi Nakamoto. 

The value of Bitcoin had hung steady for several years in the mid-2010’s, settling at a price of somewhere between US$200-600 from 2012 to mid 2016. By this point, you probably only knew about Bitcoin if you had one slightly bonkers, very sleep-deprived friend yapping in your ear imploring you to join him investing your life savings in this thing because, “Trust me bro, this thing’s gonna blow just wait.” And if so, you probably rolled your eyes and said something like, “Yeah, and I’m winning Powerball tomorrow too.”

Well, as it turned out, you probably should’ve taken his word for it (just not for anything else, mind you) as the cryptocurrency experienced a significant boom in 2017, rising as high as $19,783.06 in December of that year. However, what goes up must come down, and the cryptocurrency crashed in January of 2018, seemingly confirming the belief of many economists that Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general were a ‘speculative bubble’ just waiting to pop.

What followed was a two year period of heavy fluctuation, with more ups and downs than a day on Kanye West’s Twitter page, in part due to a series of hacks to major cryptocurrency exchanges. After taking a substantial hit at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak early last year (along with just about every national economy and business large or small, other than the toilet paper industry), the future of Bitcoin as a legitimate form of currency was beginning to look bleak. However, a series of massive investments from major corporate players and displays of public approval from payment companies Visa and Paypal have seen the price skyrocket to the unprecedented $50K milestone.

Notably, Bitcoin also received high profile investment from Tesla and online endorsement from you-know-who, everyone’s favourite engineer turned businessman turned one-man-social-media-entertainment spectacular, Elon Musk, who’s addition of ‘#bitcoin’ in his Twitter bio saw the price of Bitcoin rise 20% in one hour (would be great if we could get #M2 in there next, Elon). 

So where does it all go from here? The road to get here has been a bumpy one to say the least, and the jury is still very much out on whether this really is the beginning of what could revolutionise the way we spend our money. All I know is, fifty is worth celebrating, so I’m raising a toast to you, Bitcoin, and here’s to fifty more. 

2008 – Bitcoin.org domain name is registered

2010 – First known commercial transaction of Bitcoin.

2013 – Price of Bitcoin rises significantly, from $13.30 to $770.44 by years end.

2014-mid 2017 – Long period of fluctuation, price hovers around $200-600.

Late 2017 – The first Bitcoin ‘boom’, price rockets to as high as $19,783.06.

Early 2018 – The Bitcoin Crash, price falls back significantly.

Mid 2019-mid 2020 –  Period of significant and rapid fluctuation in price, as high as $13,796.49 in June 2019, as low as $3,191.30 in Dec 2019.

Late 2020-now – The Second Bitcoin boom, significant investment drives price over US$50,000