Bitcoin Forum

I wasn’t aware of the story, and found it an interesting read on how the first BTC price was set on an Exchange (arguably primitive, placing petitions by email and such):


The New Liberty Standard is considered by some as the first Exchange, and as such, on 05/10/2009, it had to set it’s first BTC price in USD (payments were initially made through PayPal). The price was set, based upon the following formula:

(*) The person behind New Liberty Standard I presume.

It’s interesting to see how the price changed pretty wildly over the first few days (you can see a longer price table and a bunch of interesting stuff by navigating through the archived site, whose link I provided further below).
As said, offer and demand did not set the price back then (initially), but rather the above formula that ensured covering costs. The variation in price from one day to another is, I figure, due to the change in the "bitcoins generated by my computer(*) over the past 30 days" part, which will change as the 30 day window slides forward another day. Later on, price calculus was modified to include moving averages and the cost of data bandwidth.

Dates to consider:
03/01/2009: First bitcoin block is mined.
12/01/2009: First BTC TX (Satoshi -> Hal : 10 BTCs).
05/10/2009: First known price for BTC is set (as per the referenced links down below).
12/10/2009: First TX on New Liberty Standard -> Sirius (Martti Malmi) sold 5050 BTCs to New Liberty Standard for 5,02$ (Paypal).
05/02/2010: New Liberty Standard proposes using ฿ as BTC’s currency symbol Bitcoin Currency Symbol ฿ (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=41.msg238#msg238).
18/05/2010: @laszlo offers 10K BTCs for 2 pizzas (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=137.0) (consiered the first comercial TX).
22/05/2010: @laszlo confirms the TX having taken place (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=137.msg1195#msg1195).

See:
NewLibertyStandard (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=26) (perfil Bitcointalk)
https://web.archive.org/web/20091229132610/http://newlibertystandard.wetpaint.com/page/Exchange+Rate
https://www.sgtreport.com/2021/01/dawn-of-bitcoin-price-discovery-2009-2011-the-very-early-bitcoin-exchanges/
https://www.bullionstar.com/blogs/ronan-manly/dawn-of-bitcoin-price-discovery-2009-2011-the-very-early-bitcoin-exchanges/

Note: My dates are written as dd/mm/yyyy

How times have changed, majority of people at the time had little idea at the time that this technology was going to have such a huge impact.

That was quite an interesting way to determine the price of Bitcoin, and how different the market would be if it was used today. I assume it would be quite difficult to do now as Bitcoin is now worldwide and determine a cost of electricity is not feasible, so there cannot be a definite value.


Would the my be the computer of there person behind the price speculation?

Bitcoin when it was first launched in 2009, the profits we can earn today can reach millions or billions of dollars, because the initial value of the asset was still US $ 0. This is definitely the best performing asset in the last decade, but unfortunately I'm just learning about bitcoin at the beginning of 2019, even so I have never regretted it, because bitcoin has helped my finances a lot. especially when the pandemic hit my country..

It's very interesting to see that bitcoin nowadays changed a lot,  if we hold our very first bitcoin in the space since 2009 perhaps it's million now or billion. Lol but unfortunately many people that time were very scared in such creation and also because of some negative feedbacks around the internet,  but yes it's not too late and for sure after 10 years there will be a good improvement again because a lot of people already knows how good these crypto world..so its not surprising anymore if someday we will see a new record especially from bitcoin..

Reading this, I really can't imagine that it would take thousands of bitcoins just to actually accumulate it into a dollar 12 years ago, 12 years later, 1 BTC is equals to $50k, the amount of profit someone will actually get if they invested in BTC 12 years ago.  15,100 bitcoins were only available back then to be bought and sold only for a dollar, if I only knew about crypto and Bitcoin back then, I would have invested in a lot knowing thousands of Bitcoin costed for only a dollar.

From today's perspective, the start of trading really seems almost unreal, not only because you could buy a huge amount of BTC for $1, but also because of the way the price was determined. But it was something completely different, because everyone could use their personal computer to mine BTC, and we must not forget that the reward per block was as much as 50 BTC, which was 7200 BTC per day, while today that number is only 900 BTC.

---

@DdmrDdmr, by the dates you set, Laszlo bought 2 pizzas for 10 000 BTC before the first sale took place on First TX on New Liberty Standard, but this is wrong, according to what can be seen on Martti Malmi Twitter, (https://twitter.com/marttimalmi/status/423455561703624704?lang=en) the transaction happened 1 year earlier (2009-10-12).

Let's be totally honest here.. no you wouldn't lol. Bitcoin is just an obvious investment right now just because it already rose in price innumerable times. People love to say "if only I knew about bitcoin early on.. etc etc" but in fact, 99% of us would just have ignored Bitcoin.

It is always been good to see and remember the history of Bitcoin even we once ignore it before until we found out that this was a good and profitable investment. We can really think and say, why?
If Bitcoin prices don't move so fast like that, it is for sure only a few people will give interest in this thing. Yeah, only a few people but as it rose up, millions got crazy to come and share chunks of Bitcoin, buying at $40k, $50k...

Yep (price setting). The "my" refers to the person behind the New Liberty Standard site, who took his own mining metrics as a basis to calculate the initial BTC price.

Fun fact, there was some very early conceptual speculation on price, even back then:
On after thought, the use of 20M and not 21M BTCs in Hal's quoted text, could have simply been a simplification for the calculus.

Cheers for pointing that out.

That's the great thing about it— the price increase is free marketing. Because of price increases, moonboys who want to get rich quick join in; and while a lot of them exit when prices stop rising, a minority of that group digs deeper and learn about bitcoin and it's other great characteristics outside of "number go up".

It is how the market works and how the 4 year cycle of the market works.

The total supply of Bitcoin is well known as well as the halving every four years. The amazing thing is each four year, Bitcoin is mentioned more on the social media and mainstream media. They contribute to the growth of Bitcoin exposure to the community and the awareness of the community about Bitcoin.

In addition, four years are long enough to do a full cycle of the market, bull to bear, positive to negative and help whales to accumulate cheap Bitcoin at bottom. Price will begin a new bull cycle when retail investors give up and feel no hope in the market. It is when whales will trigger the new bull market, in surprise, disbelief and uncertainty of retail investors.

And there was people in /. claiming it was another scam or vapor, i remember well... I didn't look at it because the early wallets were for windows, and i hate windows, so i missed the switch to qt, etc. It doesn't matter anymore, lost opportunities are lost forever.

It is interesting to know how the price of Bitcoin was fixed at its early stage. It is evident that the amount of electricity consumption has been in consideration from day one. Even till date, the energy consumption of bitcoin is still in high consideration. However, other factors that determines price are in place such as; speculations, miners activities, trading activities etc. But, it will be interesting to understand that the initial formula of determining bitcoin price is still in existence. Maybe the mathematics is now complicated, but am not sure that it's totally abandoned.

At the beginning of Bitcoin's presence, many people would think that BTC had the potential to be a scam, Because this is a new thing in the world of finance. Actually, missing that moment doesn't mean we've run out of space. There are many places in crypto. If we think we missed the opportunity when BTC was still cheap, at least we can still have it now. What the future price of BTC will be, we will never know, but as long as investors and the community are support, BTC will survive.

Oh man did anyone notice that first BTC payment was actually made on PayPal ??
That’s crazy and I am literally startled with this article. I am not sure why PayPal did not take the chances of officially accepting the BTC payment right after they made the first transaction ? Why Elon was not aware about this before; it’s really thinkable I guess?

And yes, the price rose pretty smart way considering the mining was so easy and transaction were cheapest one. I can imagine now how peeps at the time would have seen their project grow like this! The purest transactions of the time. May be experimental too?

I knew about Bitcoin in early 2012 when the price was $5 or so. I looked at it, thought "ok, some new form of electronic money, whatever" and forgot about it. Even claimed 0.005 BTC from a faucet.

When Bitcoin was in early days, it was much harder to be a hodler, because of the fear that every crash can be the death of Bitcoin. And the market was way more volatile, you could have invested $1,000 and see it be valued $500 in a few hours.

The answer I can think of is that there wasn't enough hype around it at the time. No one (or almost no one) expected a technology made by an anonymous entity to become as popular and valuable as it is now. Many board members and share holders would have seen adopting Bitcoin as a very bad financial decision.

The early adopter stage is usually the thinnest and consists of people who are not necessarily interested for financial gains or obvious potential, but the possibilities that exists.

the beginning of the emergence of BTC in 2009 which is certainly a history that will never be forgotten. $1 is equivalent to 1,309 BTC and it would have been great to buy that year and hold it until now. Even in that year, I was not familiar with crypto and digital payment technology. I know paypal and have never tried it.
BTC has become a very extraordinary digital asset with an increase that I think is extraordinary that other digital assets do not have.
this is all because of the strength of the Bitcoin community that continues to grow today. Bitcoin is a trusted asset that is able to destabilize the world economic market.

Regrets do always come on the last because nothing is certain when it comes to future.Wayback when im still on college i do hear out about bitcoin on early 2010's but had that impression that it might be
some another online ponzi scheme or things like attached on being scam and jumping to 2015-2017 then i did really bang up my head into the wall because i hadnt expected for bitcoin to go this high.
Those what if's kind of things do go in into my mind and imagining that i could be super duper rich if i had able to accumulate in.

Time flies! It has really been twelve years since Bitcoin was first released in the cryptocurrency market. From that day to now, Bitcoin price has increased at an incredible rate. Just think about the possibility that there are still some people who have been HODLing Bitcoin from its first times to this day. The current price would just blow their mind considering their insane profit. But I guess that there is nobody but Satoshi who have been HODLing for that long time.

You have a completely wrong idea when you think that way, because it is true that Martti Malmi (forum name Sirius) sold BTC in 2009 in a way that he got paid through PayPal - but that does not mean that PP had anything to do with Bitcoin.

Furthermore, the way you think is completely illogical, because how else to describe your surprise that PayPal or EM did not react to Bitcoin back in 2009 - and how many people even knew that Bitcoin existed at the time? I believe they had no idea about it at that time, just like you, me, and 99% of today's forum members.

I remember stumbling upon that archived page from a thread on the "Project Development" board before ^{[it was using those prices as a reference for older dates]}, but I never paid enough attention to the formula that was responsible for those prices, until you created this thread ^{[thank you for mentioning it here]}.

• It'd be interesting to see what the prices would've been if we were still using that formula ^{[obviously we have to tweak the first and the last part of the formula so it could apply to the current situation that we're in at the moment (ASICS)]}!

---

Thanks to your reference links, they brought "another interesting thread (https://bitcointalk.org/?topic=41.0)" to my attention.

I have known bitcoin for almost 9 years and at that time it was easy to earn bitcoin from various faucets and giveaways, I still remember when I participated in the lottery and won 2 btc, if I was patient and didn't use 25 btc for gambling, and HYIP in 2012 of course I can buy new sports cars, apartments and so on.

Was Elon Musk even a shareholder of PayPal back in 2009?I think that he sold his stocks earlier.
Anyway,why would PayPal adopt a newly founded experimental cryptocurrency,that has almost no users,except a few geeks and nerds?This doesn't make any sense from a business perspective.
Between 2001 and 2009 PayPal were still developing their partnerships with Mastercard,VISA and various banks.They have also acquired a few payment companies like VeriSign and Braintree,in order to improve their security and become more user friendly,AFAIK.
Bitcoin simply wasn't on their radar.
The information about New Liberty Standard is pretty interesting.I guess that this is the day Bitcoin became an investment tool and a financial asset.

It is interesting to remember the old story when the price of bitcoin was not as expensive as it is now. I am an interested user in bitcoin after the hype of bitcoin and ICO 2017 (ATH 2017) reached my ears. Precisely in march 2018 I signed up for a forum account and started doing something to earn bitcoin by joining some bullshit bounty campaign because I really didn't get anything there.

I don't have to regret anything because to be honest I didn't have enough money to buy bitcoin in 2018 before I finally managed to make some bitcoin through the signature campaign. I firmly believe that the average person would probably be disappointed today if they didn't buy a lot of bitcoin when they were still quite cheap around November - December 2018 because only 3.5 years lags they would have made enough money on that investment. Bitcoin trading has grown quite rapidly and has never stopped in the last 12 years. We will see today as history in the next 12 years as well. $51K is the price at the time I'm writing.

I gave it a wee go, but failed to backtrack properly the initial formula to the number of mined blocks over the past 30 days (in order to ensure having interpreted the formula properly before trying to replace values with current day values). Not sure why I can’t interpret the formula numerically properly (which is why it’s best to represent it numerically, with all the parenthesis and such, and not in a textual manner).

If anyone gives it a go, and manages to bring it to date with scenarios of 1..n ASICS, ot would be interesting to see.

Note: By the 04/03/2010, the price took (his) supply and demand into consideration:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=70.msg631#msg631

I also feel aroused about how far bitcoin has come along in this journey of 10-12 years and now prices already above $50k  and this data is quite good about how the fluctuations in setting $1 per bitcoin in 6 months on exchange like going from 1300 bitcoins to 800 within short time period.Three to four years ahead you would be finding the $50k mark way too low when they will be at that year ATH.The time really moves fast than we thought it would be.

Bitcoin is one of the greatest regret of my life. 12 yrs ago I was curious what Bitcoin is but forget about it when I focused on freelance job. I wish I can go back time again, and buy atleast 10,000 Bitcoins at $0.10 each.

Time flies so very fast and it's more than a decade already but a lot has happened to bitcoin. From good stories to bad stories including the FUD. If it's not for those contributors who really did well in the past, where could bitcoin be? It took a long time before PayPal did adopt bitcoin when in fact the first payment transaction did was with their payment processor. We're already on the middle stage IMHO but it's still not too late for everyone to buy bitcoin.

I'll be honest, I was very much one of these people that overlooked Bitcoin, albeit I got in much later than 2009. I'm definitely not going to be claiming that I foreseen the possibilities, and technical advantages that Bitcoin would bring to the world, at least not initially. In fact, if my memory serves me correctly, I initially looked into Bitcoin, and decided not to get into it after a brief bit of research. I can't actually remember what convinced me to take a look at it again, there wasn't a awful amount of news around this time, and I was probably just looking at alternatives to payment processors.

I think it's safe to say since then Bitcoin has significantly impacted my life, even from a lifestyle point of view, and has also shaped some of my views around the banking systems, and how much to value privacy. Even things which aren't directly connected to Bitcoin.

That situation is really ironic here. It took more than a decade for PayPal to finally include crypto in their system, and yes, looking back, it was their platform that made it possible for the first payment. They should be very proud as they were already part in the early history of bitcoin. Who knows bitcoin will achieve this level of popularity and price level? A lot have their regrets why they haven't gotten early. But it is not too late to get involved if you truly believe btc will have a brighter future.

I think almost everyone was guilty of this at a point.
I for one never got the chance to overlook Bitcoin cause I got in at a much later time and there was already so much information and hype around it that I got hooked in instantly, finding it out through this forum was an extra advantage.

What I usually tell people who say they wish they had invested in Bitcoin earlier and then sell of in 2017 for huge profits is that; if you cannot hold for the next ten years now with the price history, you would have not held when there was little information about it even if you knew about it.

I'm just looking at Bitcoin about from where it has come to this high levels. And I'm just surprised every time I see this. I wonder if there are still some people who have been holding their coins from the start. I mean except Satoshi Nakamoto.   ;D  Bitcoin has always proven that the investors can make great profits when they make long-term investments and be patient about them even for years. Bitcoin is special also as it is the first ever cryptocurrency in the market. I just enjoy using it.

This is insane. Time shows its power. People always say that time will change everything. I think this is a perfect example of that line. And this is for those people who change their lives at that time. I still think I am dreaming such things, but the thing is, it is happening. This is truly an interesting thing. And I have to admit, when I saw this type of achievement in bitcoin, I was truly inspired to do more in bitcoin. Today, bitcoin is also my life changer, and this thing will be lots of people’s life changers in 10 years.

Time runs so fast. 12 years already - oh. Hal Finney received the first Bitcoin transaction.  That was start of everything probably  and the crypto started and continuing till today. Hard to predict future regarding this but I expect even bigger usage of crypto.

Looking at the history of Bitcoin and how it and the technology evolved over these 12 years is really fascinating, and of course, not what many people thought was possible.

The progressive outlook shows the this coin when from strength to strength, and whoever thinks this is the end are far from mistaken. We already see so many implementations of both BTC version (i.e. alts) and the technology it brought with it. I'm so excited about the wonders and possibilities we have from here...

To me one thing is certain, BTC is going to grow even more, it is only a matter of time until the regulatory hurdle (though I'm aware it's a big one) is slowly slowly getting tackled, and more countries as well as retailers see crypto as the 'go-to' problem to solving many challenging issues regarding identity, transparency etc.

It's a common thought process, but you're likely right. This is usually the argument I bring up when someone says they wish they got in earlier, to make a profit back into Bitcoin. In all likelihood they would have sold before it ever got to the all time high. However, it's within our psychology to regret something that was probably unlikely to happen, even if you were to do x at the right time. It's the butterfly effect in well...effect. If they invested at the best possible time, two years later they would have doubled, tripled their money, and likely would have thought that was the best time to withdraw.

The thing is, there's two ends of the spectrum, either you regret not getting in early or you actually believe in Bitcoin as a currency, and could potentially miss the best money making opportunity in your life. I for one, can't promise anyone what the best thing to do is despite having quite a strong belief in Bitcoin. Though, it certainly has its faults, and  I've mentioned it before, it might not actually be THE solution to our problem, however it most certainly is the step in the right direction, and might actually prove to be the foundation that we build on for better control over our money, whether that means Bitcoin will be the currency to solve our problems depends on the world's needs, and the progress we make with development, adoption, and various other factors. However, it is possible that Bitcoin gets replaced by something better, hence why it would be the foundations that created the thought process needed to better our control over our own money.

I don't actually think we're close to that though, and it might never happen. I think it all depends on how Bitcoin is perceived by the masses, and it's development in the next few years, and whether anything else revolutionary comes into play.

I confess I dreamed about something like that a couple of times, but after waking up, some kind of incomprehensible feeling of regret remains, even though I did not even hear about bitcoin at all in those times in which my subconsciousness transferred me. In addition, like any Bitcoiner, I have repeatedly thought about which strategy would be the most acceptable for me personally, and came to the unequivocal conclusion that it is best to mentally prepare myself for the long-term hodling of Bitcoins. Simply because I have repeatedly become frustrated selling too early in the hope of buying more bitcoins, or buying too late.  :-\

That was great progress after 12 years and now I can't even afford to buy 1 bitcoin. New projects back in the days attract investors with this story of bitcoin where it started almost zero value and now it reaches up to the point where most of the people cannot afford to buy a single one. That's why there are lots of people discouraged when the result of the project they invested their money with, didn't become what they expected instead they lose all their capital. That's why older investors are more clever not to believe those sweet words and they already know what's coming especially to those project that hasn't been having anything to show.

Many people are now thinking to back to the old-time but that is impossible as time goes by.
We can only try what we can while still hope that we can join in every time the coin gets a bull run to make a big profit.
At least, we can still buy bitcoin with the price now, although the price is at a high price to us.
If we think about how high bitcoin price will increase in the future, we should prepare before everything changes and we can not follow the bitcoin journey.

Previously the price of 1 Bitcoin was less than $1 in 2009, but over time the price of bitcoin continues to rise. The currency created by Satoshi Nakamoto is increasingly being used for digital transactions. Around mid-December 2013, one Bitcoin hovered around $710.
The price of bitcoin continues to rise from year to year and at this moment the price of bitcoin is around $53,900, this digital currency created by Satoshi Nakamoto is indeed very extraordinary, unfortunately when Bitcoin was popular Satoshi Nakamoto disappeared and his whereabouts are unknown until now.

You just pointed out the history of the bitcoin prices and it's not like people don't know about this.

Damn, it has already been 12 years already for bitcoin, 12 years ago, I would probably laugh when someone says to me that bitcoin is going to be priced at around 50k USD, those years are full of doubts as it's a brand new thing and the FUD back then was stronger since people are still skeptic about this technology.

There's a few people that believes on bitcoin by that time until it gained traction and where it is right now. On the side of PayPal, they really have made it on time of adopting it when there's a huge value already for bitcoin. Yes, they might be part of the history of it but they don't acknowledge that or at least I haven't seen them acknowledge it. Too many regrets we have and for sure everyone has their own unique story on how he/she should be a millionaire right now if bitcoin wasn't ignored years ago upon hearing and knowing it.

Wonderful historical data! Looking back at that time and today, no one would doubt that Bitcoin has come a long way and is only getting ready for even more success. Looking at the adoption, looking at the popularity, looking at the price difference from lunch, I bet Satoshi's dream has come to pass.

12 Years and Bitcoin has gone too far from where it was,
I wonder how much more it would grow in the future?
But one thing is for sure crypto is here to stay and it played a big role for most of us on changing our life.

This is really good, because I’ve always found it interesting to know how the first price of Bitcoin was determined in those early days when it came out. So, it’s really interesting to see how things have changed overtime, this time around they are now relying On the rate of demand to be able to determine the price of Bitcoin.

So, looking at this you will see that there have been a lot of changes on how things are being done in the past and now and this is quite interesting to know that. And by the way, seeing posts like this makes me wish I was already in the community the first day that Bitcoin was dropped so that I can buy as much as I want.

It's fascinating seeing how far the price of Bitcoin has gone ever its creation since 2009. I wonder how those fellas that don't believe in Bitcoin will be feeling now. Those that also labelled it as a ''ponzi scheme" that will end up duping people of their fortunes. I guess by now they are all full of regrets each time they hear about BTC cos they missed it "golden opportunity to become millionaires".