Happy Birthday, Bitcoin!
This evening 11 years ago, on January 3rd, 2009, someone pressed a button on his (or her) keyboard and created a new currency. There was no paper, gold, or silver backing it, just bits and 31,000 lines of software code with a simple announcement on the Internet. Along with a 9-page Whitepaper titled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”.
Bitcoin as we know it came into existence with someone by the name of Satoshi Nakamoto mining the genesis block of bitcoin (block number 0), which had a reward of 50 bitcoins worth approx $350,000 today’s market value.
During the next decade, Bitcoin would skyrocket from $0.003 to almost $20,000 per one bitcoin. It was a remarkable experiment in which fortunes were made and some lost during the speculative frenzy typical of all asset bubbles. Yes, it is an asset trading hands (or digital wallets) to the tune of $27 billion on its birthday.
It was the beginning of the cryptocurrency market which now stands at almost $200 bln in total market capitalization. Insignificant in the grand scheme of the approx $90 trillion in the total market capitalization of global public capital markets. But not bad from literally point zero a decade ago.
Most importantly Bitcoin introduced the world to the Blockchain and the tremendous potential of the technology to transform industries and significantly reduce transaction costs. Without getting into the details, of how blockchain works, let me give you an example of how serious IBM is which has over 1,000 employees working on blockchain projects and has set aside hundreds of millions of R&D funding to support the development of blockchain applications.
According to research by Outlier Ventures last year, total investment in blockchain companies since 2013 hit $23.7 billion and 75% of all deal-flow focused only on early-stage rounds.
I’m excited to be introducing soon a blockchain development company that is using a unique portfolio development approach to solve some of the most pressing challenges of our world today such as climate change, clean drinking water, and financial inclusion.
I’ll share the details in a few weeks in the comments to this article so make sure to press ‘like’ to be one of the first to learn about this exciting blockchain start-up and the outstanding investment opportunity it will present to qualifying investors.
Alternatively, DM or email me [email protected] and I’d be happy to add you to our launch notification list.
