It was 14 years ago today that Bitcoin (BTC) experienced its first sale in history at a price of just $0.001. Since then, the price has skyrocketed, but can we really compare the figures after all these years?
Bitcoin: 14 years ago, Martti Malmi was selling 5,050 BTC for $5.02
On October 12, 2009, when the Bitcoin network was barely 10 months old, Martti Malmi made the first known BTC sale in history with a user of the Bitcoin Talk forum. While 14 years may seem a relatively short time, it’s worth remembering that, at the time, the asset was worth just $0.001.
And with good reason, the said transaction saw the transfer of 5,050 BTC worth over $135 million today for the sum of $5.02 paid via PayPal :
First known BTC sale in history
To imagine how much Bitcoin’s price has risen since this transaction, it represents a multiplication of the price by more than 26.9 million.
In reality, it’s worth asking whether such comparisons make sense. After all, everyone in the ecosystem certainly has someone close to them, or “a friend of a friend”, who, if they had “bought Bitcoin back then, would have become a millionaire”.
Although 2009 may not seem like such a long time ago, it was a completely different era when crypto-currencies were not yet being talked about, and few pioneers can boast of having held on to their first BTCs over such a long period.
So it’s time to salute the progress made over the years by the famous “peer-to-peer electronic money system”, which has done much to redefine the notions of ownership and value of money. At the time of writing, BTC was trading at $26,760 each.
