First, we examined crypto-centric and digital innovations of the 20th century, and now we’re marking milestones of the current century. Bitcoin started the century in a slow-but-steady fashion but has moved at the pace of Olympic sprinter Usain Bolt more recently. Check out the noteworthy crypto milestones of the 21st century below.
The World As Bitcoin Emerges
- 2000: Y2K arrives. The world doesn’t end. After partying like it’s 1999–or with “irrational exuberance,” as Fed Chair Alan Greenspan called it–a millennium-sized hangover strikes in the form of a bursting dot-com bubble.
- 2000-2002:. NASDAQ drops 75%. Investors lose $5 trillion dollars. Yes, trillion. Everyone freaks out.
- 2007: The iPhone is introduced. Twitter is born. Civilization eventually learns that opinions expressed in cyberspace can actually cause markets to move.
- 2007-2009: The world experiences an economic downturn later dubbed “The Great Recession.” Some pundits today argue that Bitcoin was created as a reaction to the financial crisis. Others disagree.
- 2008: The domain “Bitcoin.org” is registered at anonymousspeech.com. Months later, a mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto shares a white paper titled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” It is then published to a cryptography newsletter.
- 2009: Nakamoto mines block No. 0–the “genesis block”–on January 9 at 18:15:05 UTC.
- 2010: The first Bitcoin purchase occurs. The first Bitcoin exchanges appear. Total Bitcoin market cap reaches $1 million.
- 2010: Satoshi Nakamoto posts in a Bitcoin forum for the last time. Over the following months, Satoshi stops corresponding with others via email and isn’t heard from again.
- 2011: Time Magazine introduces the general public to Bitcoin with an early story by the mainstream media. “There’s been no such thing as ‘online cash,’ no currency that could be exchanged untraceably between two persons without a third-party intermediary–no such thing, that is, until now.”
- 2013: Mel B, former Spice Girl, makes it possible to purchase her new single using Bitcoin. “Bitcoin unites my fans around the world using one currency.”
- 2013: Total Bitcoin market cap reaches $1 billion.
- 2013: The first Bitcoin ATM debuts at the Bitcoin 2013 conference.
- 2013: Bitcoin’s price tops $1,000 per coin.
- 2014: Coinsource founder Sheffield Clark placed the first Bitcoin ATM in the United States in a Las Vegas restaurant.
- 2014: Microsoft, PayPal, and Overstock.com begin accepting Bitcoin. (Overstock’s enthusiasm for Bitcoin and blockchain technology leads CNN Money to title a 2018 story, “Remember Overstock? It’s basically a crypto company now.”)
- 2015: Ethereum launches. Today, Ethereum is the second-most popular cryptocurrency, behind Bitcoin.
- 2017: A faction of Bitcoin miners and developers initiate a “hard fork,” creating a separate blockchain and Bitcoin Cash.
- 2021: Bitcoin opens the new year valued at $34,000 per coin. By April, it reached $53,000.
- 2021: El Salvador’s Congress approves legislation that makes Bitcoin legal tender in the Central American country alongside the U.S. dollar.
What’s Next?
2020 and 2021 have been unusual and unpredictable. But the century is young, and there’s still more history to be written. Check out one of our Coinsource Bitcoin ATMs near you, and we’ll write it together.
Coinsource is the world leader in Bitcoin ATMs. With a focus on compliance and ease of use, Coinsource is aiming to bring Bitcoin to the masses. Follow for blogs about Bitcoin, finance, company updates and Bitcoin ATM information!
