31 October 2008: Satoshi publishes the Bitcoin white paper
In the depths of the financial crisis, a person or group using the name Satoshi Nakamoto posted a nine-page paper describing a peer-to-peer electronic cash system that needed no bank. Few noticed at the time. The network launched months later and the first coins were essentially worthless. The identity of its creator remains unknown, and the asset it described went on to be worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
The lesson: Some world-changing ideas arrive quietly, with no marketing and no obvious buyer.
What it meant for investors
$1,000 in Bitcoin at the start of 2012 → $20,000,000 today, vs $5,312 in the S&P 500.
We start the clock at the start of 2012, the first year in our price data after the event. That is 20000.0 times the money, and $19,994,688 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | $5.00 | $20,000,000 | $5,312 |
| 2015 | $315 | $317,460 | $3,301 |
| 2018 | $14,000 | $7,143 | $2,519 |
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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