The first half of 2016 continued the same, with relatively muted volatility and price consolidation. But by the end of May, the price was picking up and by mid-June, Bitcoin was hitting $700. It didn’t last, though, and Bitcoin was back in the $600s until November 2016. It peaked back over $700 and then quickly $800 and $900. As the year ended, Bitcoin was flirting with $1,000, a level it broke through in early 2017, a watershed year for Bitcoin when it came to national awareness. The Law of Supply and Demand The transaction that first gave Bitcoin monetary value was in October 2009, when Finnish computer science student Martti Malmi, known online as Sirius, sold 5,050 coins for $5.02, giving each Bitcoin a value of $0.0009 each.
Crypto is among the most urgent of current tech topics, driven by billions of cryptocurrency trades weekly — bitcoin and so many others — and a cultural stigma perhaps unseen in finance since the days of the Wall Street wolves of the 1980s. Almost since its creation, crypto has been characterized by sudden wealth creation, surprise hacks, big scams, bold promises and shattered dreams. Bitcoin price plummets as crypto space ‘left reeling’ from failed Binance takeover of FTX Perhaps unsurprisingly for a currency designed with anonymity and lack of control in mind, Bitcoin has proven to be an attractive and lucrative target for criminals. In January 2014, the world’s largest Bitcoin exchange Mt.Gox went offline, and the owners of 850,000Bitcoins never saw them again. Investigations are still trying to get to the bottom of exactly what happened but whatever the story, someone dishonestly got their hands on a haul which at the time was valued at $450 million dollars. At today’s prices, those missing coins would be worth $4.4 billion.