17 December 2017: Bitcoin peaks near $20,000
Bitcoin hit a record of nearly $20,000 on some exchanges, capping a year in which it rose roughly twentyfold. Taxi drivers and grandparents were asking how to buy it, and companies added blockchain to their names to pump their stock. The same day, CME launched its own bitcoin futures. Within a year the price had collapsed by more than 80 percent.
The lesson: When everyone you know is asking how to buy something, be careful.
What it meant for investors
$1,000 in Bitcoin at the start of 2018 → $7,143 today, vs $2,519 in the S&P 500.
We start the clock at the start of 2018, the first year in our price data after the event. That is 7.1 times the money, and $4,624 more than a plain index fund made over the same years.
What Bitcoin teaches: Extraordinary returns came bundled with repeated drawdowns of 75 percent or more; the gains went mostly to holders who could survive each collapse without selling.
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | $315 | $317,460 | $3,301 |
| 2018 | $14,000 | $7,143 | $2,519 |
| 2020 | $7,200 | $13,889 | $2,092 |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
What if you bought Bitcoin? Every starting year and the full story →
More Bitcoin history
- 3 January 2009: Bitcoin's genesis block is mined
- 7 February 2014: Mt. Gox halts bitcoin withdrawals
- 12 May 2021: Musk stops accepting Bitcoin for Teslas
- 19 May 2021: Bitcoin's May crash
- 22 May 2010: Two pizzas for 10,000 Bitcoin
- 9 June 2021: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender
Could you have called it at the time? The wheel picks the year, you pick the position, ten seconds a pick.
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