Crypto is quite a catchy niche for investors and tech enthusiasts nowadays, but it hasn’t always been like that. Digital currencies, the way we know them right now, made their appearance little over 16 years ago. If you come to think about it, this is a relatively short period of time for such a popular asset class, especially when you compare it to traditional financial instruments like stocks, bonds, or fiat money, which have been around for centuries or millennia.
However, crypto’s journey leading up to this point has been spectacular and intense to say the least, as a lot of things, both good and bad, have happened since its inception. And judging by the latest crypto predictions, things aren’t about to slow down anytime soon. Some of the events we’ve witnessed during these years have shaken, marked, and shaped the crypto industry, and have contributed significantly to its development.
If you’re looking to understand how digital currencies have managed to come such a long way in such a short time, this quick rundown of the most momentous episodes in crypto’s history might provide some clarification in this respect.
Bitcoin’s Birth (2009)
The origins of digital currencies can be traced back to the 80s and 90s, when the first efforts to create a completely decentralized and digitalized monetary system started, but the modern era of crypto, in the form we know it today, began with Bitcoin’s birth in 2009.
On October 31, 2008, a whitepaper titled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System was posted to a cryptography mailing list. The paper was penned by a certain Satoshi Nakamoto, whose real identity remains a complete mystery to this day, and described the functioning principles, motivations, and vision behind Bitcoin. Several months later, in January 2009, Nakamoto mined the first Bitcoin block and launched the original blockchain network, and that’s how the crypto phenomenon began.
Pizza Day (2010)
Bitcoin was created as an alternative form of payment, one that doesn’t require intermediaries like central banks and doesn’t imply physical transactions. Instead, it relies on a decentralized web of computers, referred to as nodes, in charge of validating and recording transfers on a public ledger (the blockchain). For a while, Bitcoin’s potential as a tool for facilitating transactions remained just an interesting concept, since no one had put it to the test.
Then, on May 22nd, 2010, Laszlo Hayencz, a developer who also happened to be interested in crypto, had the idea of buying a couple of pizzas using Bitcoin. However, since no pizza places accepted BTC back then, he posted an offer on the Bitcointalk forum, saying he would pay 10,000 Bitcoin, which at the time were worth $41, for two large pizzas. A few days later, a person named Jeremy Sturdivant took him up on the offer, and Hayencz paid Sturdivant the promised amount for bringing him two pizzas from Papa John’s. This day went down in crypto history as Pizza Day and would become a yearly celebration for Bitcoin and crypto enthusiasts around the world, always keen on commemorating the first commercial crypto transaction.
Bitcoin Surpasses $1K (2013)
Bitcoin’s value increased significantly between 2009 and 2012, even though it was still regarded as a fringe experiment. But its biggest jump in price came in 2013 when it went above the $1000 threshold for the first time, a performance that many consider to be the first crypto boom.
The surge didn’t last long, but it was enough to make the public aware of Bitcoin’s existence and increase its popularity among average individuals who were neither tech savvy nor part of the early crypto community. That’s when the world became aware of the immense potential that Bitcoin held, and the original crypto started transitioning from a niche currency to a more mainstream financial vehicle.
Mt. Gox Crash (2014)
Mt. Gox was launched in 2010 and became one of the most successful crypto exchanges ever, so successful in fact that at one point almost 70% of all Bitcoin transactions were processed by the platform. Unfortunately, Mt. Gox’s rising fame also made it a primary target for cybercriminals, and with security measures being rather weak, the exchange was hacked several times.
The most serious attack happened in 2014, when it lost hundreds of thousands of BTC, a blow that eventually led to the platform’s demise. The Mt. Gox collapse also raised concerns about crypto security and triggered discussions about the necessity of oversight and regulations for the crypto sector.
Ethereum’s Arrival (2015)
Bitcoin was quite a lone wolf in the first years after its emergence, lacking any real competition from the handful of digital currencies that existed at the time, many of which were nothing more than feeble copycats. Although Bitcoin’s dominance continues to this day, in 2015, its main challenger, Ethereum, entered the scene.
Unlike most other crypto projects that tried to follow in Bitcoin’s footsteps, Ethereum aimed to innovate and improve on the concepts that Bitcoin popularized, and so it did. It brought groundbreaking functionalities, as it became the first blockchain platform to enable smart contracts and support decentralized applications (dApps), thus creating new use cases for blockchain and crypto.
The ICO Boom (2017-2018)
Around 2017, the crypto market saw an explosion of initial coin offerings (ICOs), which would lead to the first global crypto boom. Bitcoin skyrocketed from around $1,000 in January 2017 to nearly $20,000 in December 2017, and thousands of new coins flooded the market. As a result, the popularity of digital currencies reached unprecedented levels.
However, beyond the massive investments and price spikes, the sector was also brimming with scams and fraudulent schemes due to the lack of regulatory oversight. The bullish trend ended abruptly in 2018, giving way to a period of harsh decline, also known as the crypto winter.
The First Spot Crypto ETFs (2024)
In 2024, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) gave the green light for 11 spot Bitcoin ETFs by major financial institutions, such as BlackRock, Fidelity, Ark Invest, and Grayscale. This was quite unexpected as the SEC was never a supporter of crypto. The approval made it easier and safer for traditional investors and retirement funds to access Bitcoin through conventional financial products. After this milestone, a similar one followed, with the approval of spot Ether (ETH) ETFs in May 2024, which further solidified crypto’s standing in the traditional finance world.
