So, That’s The Beginning Of Bitcoin Then

Bitcoin is back, and we are still only at the beginning

With the recent resurgence of interest in Bitcoin and other Digital Assets - to many as a surprise, whilst to others just as a self-fulfilling prophecy – I recall the many times that “Bitcoin has died”, 477 to be exact.

One of the earliest articles speaking about the end of Bitcoin, and ironically published as a contribution to Forbes, similar to the one that I am currently writing, was written in June 2011, when Bitcoin was trading for around $15, with the title “So, That’s the End of Bitcoin Then”. The short contribution was written around the same time that the Mt. Gox – once the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange – was hacked and Bitcoin’s price dropped from “$17 to pennies in a matter of minutes”, with the author concluding that “Bitcoins aren’t secure [..], not liquid, nor a store of value”. Over the past few weeks, Bitcoin is breaching all-time-high after all-time-high, driven by increased regulatory clarity, the proliferation of Bitcoin ETFs, a seemingly pro-crypto US president-elect and on the back of an increasingly challenging geopolitical as well as macro environment.

Bitcoin does not die

As I’ve previously written here, Bitcoin has the potential to become the de facto reserve currency of nation states, setting the stage for a new global world order. Since 2011, Bitcoin underwent significant market cycles, overcoming major regulatory and infrastructural challenges, proving that it can act as a secure store of value, medium of exchange and new form of currency. Over the past decade, the digital asset industry matured significantly, with an ever-growing number of regulated companies offering the underlying infrastructure and overarching services to support and enable the growth of Bitcoin and digital asset based products and services. This includes, secure and regulated custody, such as the offering at Komainu (my employer), supporting the launch of exchange traded products with and their underlying digital assets; trading venues like Coinbase or OKX, which make it easy for the everyday as well as institutional investor to buy and sell digital assets, and companies like MoonPay or Stripe that have integrated digital asset services into a global network of merchants, allowing users to use digital assets as medium of exchange.

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With 2024 coming to an end, and Bitcoin, as well as other cryptocurrencies expected to continue to rise into 2025, it has become obvious that blockchain-based networks are just at the beginning of having a fundamental impact into the future of financial services and will have a global impact as a medium of exchange and store of value. Governments and central banks around the world are starting to embrace Bitcoin and the underlying technology, nearly every major financial services institution has a mandate to explore the potential of these technologies and corporate treasuries are accelerating their use of Bitcoin as part of their treasury – and we are just at the beginning.

With Bitcoin currently trading at close to six figures, I can only hope that the author took a risk and at least bought some Bitcoin when it was trading for pennies in 2011.