October 5, 2009
The first bitcoin exchange rate is published, marking one U.S. dollar at 1,309.03 bitcoin. You might have bought four IMAX movie tickets to Avatar, for $58.32.
But if you had invested that $58.32 in bitcoin instead, it would be worth $487 million: enough to bankroll the entire production budgets of Black Panther, Ant-Man and the Wasp, and Deadpool 2.
Today
2
x Pizzas
May 22, 2010
On this infamous date now celebrated as Bitcoin Pizza Day, programmer Laszlo Hanyecz used 10,000 bitcoin (about $30 USD) to purchase two pizzas, which he had delivered to his Jacksonville home.
4
x Tickets
Today
For that kind of cheese today—$64 million—you could go to NYC’s classic Joe’s Pizza and buy a slice ($2.25) for each of New York State’s 19 million residents… plus all 9 million residents of New Jersey.
February 9, 2011
Today
Bitcoin reached the astounding price of one U.S. dollar, after skyrocketing 1,000% in six months. By June 1, it neared $9, and you could buy 3.5 grams of weed on The Silk Road for 7.63 bitcoin.
Today, that 7.63 bitcoin (and a glaucoma prescription) will get you 4 kilos of Indica, or about 12,500 joints, at a California dispensary.
3.5
g
12,500
Joints
3.55
Million
Pizzas
487
$
Million
487
$
Million
?
Million
3.55
Pizzas
?
12,500
Joints
?
June 7, 2011
Game of Thrones premiered in May 2011, as bitcoin boomed, rising from 29 cents on January 1st to $31.91 on June 7th. Then, thanks partly to a flash-crash raid on the leading bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox, the price fell off a cliff as steep as Westeros' legendary Wall.
31.91
?
A “Crypto winter”—not the first or last or longest for bitcoin—hit hard, dropping the price to $1.99.
November 17, 2011
$
1.99
$
July 4, 2013
In 2013, “The Harlem Shake” went viral, and like those videos, bitcoin started the year off slow, swinging up and down before dipping to around $64 on Independence Day.
64
$
$
Then, true to the meme, bitcoin went nuts, partying to a new all-time high of $1,242 on November 29. If you’d bought low with $100,000 and sold high, that $1.9m could have bought you a Harlem brownstone, cash.
1,242
November 29, 2013
February 2014
In 2014, tech douchebags clamored for Google Glass eyewear, panicked Greeks sold local currency for bitcoin, and, in February, the Mt. Gox exchange filed for bankruptcy. Multiple hackers reportedly stole a total of 744,408 bitcoin from the exchange, worth around $350 million in 2014—or 233,333 pairs of $1,500 Google Glass.
350
- $
- $
Some bitcoin was retrieved, but if the thieves had managed to hold onto all of it, they’d have 4.77 billion worth today—enough to buy an Oculus Rift virtual reality system for every one of the 11-plus million residents of now-recovering Greece.
4.77
Today
Million
Billion
December 17, 2017
In 2017, bitcoin began the year at just $900 but soon it—and a whole buffet of cryptocurrencies—went mainstream the world over, sparking a bull run nearly unprecedented in economic history.
As everyone was either watching The Last Jedi or explaining crypto to their parents, the price rocketed to $19,783. If you’d spent a dollar on bitcoin in 2009, that buck would have been worth $25.9 million—enough to play Santa and buy Porg plushies for 1.2 million pals.
25.9
$
Million
$
Plenty of early investors cashed in and made out handsomely at the end of 2017, when Bitcoin peaked to $19,783. But overnight-fortune-seeking latecomers who dipped into the kid’s college fund were not so lucky.
If you cashed out three years of the kid’s college fund to buy bitcoin at the all-time-high, the poor kid could only afford one year of college at today’s price of 6,403.
Today
August 24, 2015
From roughly September of 2014 to May of 2016, bitcoin’s price bumped from $300 to $500, and didn’t make much news. (Just like a real asset!). Maybe you thought, “So what if I don’t get that Lambo—I can still get out with a Beemer!”
Mercedes
Lamborghini
If you cashed out on August 24th, 2015, with bitcoin at $208.52, you could have nabbed a C-Class for around $50,000, or 239.78 bitcoin.
Today, that’s $1.5 million—or, in Lambos, enough to cop about four Lamborghini Huracan LP 640-4 Performante Spyders.
Today
2013
Some bitcoin fortunes have been lost simply because they’ve been, uh, lost. In 2013, British IT worker James Howells threw away a hard drive that contained keys for 7,500 bitcoin in 2013—enough to buy 16.8 million 2GB flash drives today at $2.85/each. And forensic experts at Chainalysis estimate that as many as 3.79 million bitcoin are likely lost forever.
The grand total of that missing bitcoin? $25.6 billion. To picture how much was lost, imagine if the entire $25 billion valuation of Twitter (or SpaceX) just—poof!—disappeared.
$
1 =
19,783
$
6,403
-
16.8
$
Million
-
25.6
$
-
Billion
$
1.99
1
x
4
x
?
Billion
- $
4.77
?
4
x
Lamborghini
Riches & Regrets
A Decade of Bitcoin What-Ifs
?
$
-
6,403
?
Today
25.6
$
-
Billion
?
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The roots of cryptocurrency stretch back to the early 1980s, but most consider Halloween 2008 the official birthday of bitcoin. That’s when the unknown entity known as Satoshi Nakamoto published the groundbreaking, pseudonymous paper: “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.” The decade since has been a rollercoaster of boom-and-bust highs, lows, and “if only I’d bought (or sold) then” regrets. Below, BREAKER and Ceros Originals illustrate what might have been, if only you’d seen the future of bitcoin, for better or worse.
Click the equal signs to find out what that bitcoin could have bought.
If Only You’d Bought Then…
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Words by logan hill
Design by PETER CARLSON
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