From Pizza To Lambos: Charting Bitcoin’s First Decade
Story by: Eric Lam and Lauren Leatherby
Ten years ago this month, Satoshi Nakamoto published a paper online introducing the concept of a “purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash” called Bitcoin. But it wasn’t until May 2010, when software developer Laszlo Hanyecz swapped 10,000 Bitcoins for two pizzas, that the virtual currency became a means for buying real-world stuff.
Suffice it to say, you can get a lot more than two pizzas with 10,000 Bitcoins these days.
Here’s a look at how the purchasing power of that original transaction has changed over the past eight years, running the gamut from iPads to Lamborghinis (or Lambos, in industry parlance) as early adopters, true believers, Wall Street financiers and retail investors all jumped on the Bitcoin rollercoaster.
The growing (and shrinking) purchasing power of 10,000 Bitcoins
0
$10M
$50M
$100M
$150M
$200M
2010
Two pizzas
$41 in 2010
32GB iPad
$729 in 2010
1oz gold
$1,338 in 2010
Transactions top $1 million
One Berkshire Hathaway Class A share
$114,380 in 2011
2012
Tesla Model S
$57,400 in 2012
Transactions top $100 million
Ellen Degeneres’ ranch
$10.8 million in 2013
2014
Mt. Gox files for bankruptcy in Japan, saying 850,000 Bitcoins were missing
“Stay away from it. It’s a mirage, basically.”
—Warren Buffett
First Superman comic book
$3.2 million in 2014
“You’re wasting your time.”
—Jamie Dimon
2016
Two special edition
Lamborghini Centenarios
$1.9 million in 2016
Paul Newman’s Rolex
$17.8 million in 2017
Mark Rothko’s No. 6
$186 million
Transactions top $1 billion
2018
Hackers steal almost $500 million in NEM coins from Japan’s Coincheck, one of the largest heists in history
Lockheed Martin F-35A jet
$94.6 million
Excellence V yacht
$87 million in 2018
As Bitcoin has grown, so has its user base. Daily transactions topped $1 million in April 2011, roughly a year after the pizza deal.
Dollar value of daily transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain
Of course, the cryptocurrency universe of today is much bigger than just Bitcoin. More than 1,000 digital currencies trade on exchanges around the world, including everything from serious Bitcoin rivals such as Ether to outright jokes like DogeCoin. When cryptomania peaked in January 2018, the market value of cryptocurrencies tracked by CoinMarketCap.com surpassed $835 billion.
Number of new cryptocurrencies on exchanges by month
Calculated via the first day various cryptocurrencies register non-zero trading volume on any of more than 200 public digital currency exchanges tracked by the website.
The coins have since wiped out some $600 billion of that value as regulators cracked down and hopes for widespread adoption waned. As Bitcoin’s first decade comes to a close, it’s still far from clear whether cryptocurrencies will transform global payments, become “digital gold,” or spiral into irrelevance.
At least Hanyecz got his pizzas.
Original story by: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-bitcoin-anniversary/
by 