Bitcoin Forum

When I started trading in Bitcoins, the rate was above $300 but through some discussions on this forum, I noticed the price had crossed $1000. When was it and on what factors does this price depend on? Does it work the same way the stock market and forex operate? Also, what was the highest price bitcoin ever attained and the lowest price as well?


Currently the price is $287 and am waiting it to again reach atleast $300.

The price is simply derived by supply and demand. At the very beginning, Bitcoins were worth literally nothing. Thats right, nothing. Why you ask, well, no one was buying them, so the only owners were miners, and Bitcoin didn't simply have any value.
Only later on with the first exchanges made between users a price was starting to take shape, then with the first actual exchange the price started to take it's course until what we have today.

OK so basically the bitcoin price started increasing after people became aware of it. So I was right in saying it works the same way as the stock market with respect to the demand and supply.


I wonder why did the price fall from $1000 to $200 - $300. Was it because the demand was high or was it adopted by a brand/company which made the price reach that amount?

The lowest price bitcoin was sitting at on an online exchange at the very beginning was around $0.06, with a flash low of $0.01.


http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/chart.png?width=940&m=mtgoxUSD&SubmitButton=Draw&r=60&i=&c=1&s=2009-01-14&e=2010-10-15&Prev=&Next=&t=S&b=&a1=&m1=10&a2=&m2=25&x=0&i1=&i2=&i3=&i4=&v=1&cv=0&ps=0&l=0&p=0&

Like anything valuable in the world, bitcoin started its young life at $0.00 in late 2009. It rose all the way to $1200 in late 2013, and then crashed all through 2014, and here we are sitting now at $283.

The all time high question isn't as simple as you would imagine.  The Mt Gox all time high was $1242, but at the same time it was about $1153 on Stamp. Gox was higher than all the others for a long time as no one could withdraw from there so Gox coins could only be bought and not sold!

Hopefully it will be worth debating some time soon, but I would say Gox prices should be forgotten and the ATH is $1153

If you scroll right back to the start of the Mt Gox chart on tradingview it shows that brief spike down to $0.01

http://s22.postimg.org/9shr9z9m9/mtgox.png

https://www.tradingview.com/e/?symbol=MTGOX%3ABTCUSD

The lowest price a Bitcoin sold for on an exchange might have been lower than one cent. There was an exchange called Bitcoin Market that was trading earlier than Mt Gox, but I can't find any charts showing its prices. Here's the announcement posts for both Bitcoin Market and Mt Gox.

Someone (Gavin I think) has a Google Docs spreadsheet of Bitcoin Market trades.  I don't have the link to hand, but the earliest trade in that spreadsheet was for $0.003 (i.e. 0.3c) on on 25 April 2010.

Supply/Demand; trading; predictions of the future price through speculation, adoption, media attention and regulation.

I found this post with a link to a CSV text format, zipped file of Bitcoin Market trades, but it gives a 404 not found error.

As far as I recall the first recorded trade was 1300 BTC for a dollar in 2009. If we go for the highest then it would've been on localbitcoins at the height of the mania or an exchange glitch. One sold on CampBX for $9700 a few months ago.

early birds must have known something we didn't. those who bought under $1 and managed to hold till above $500 are in the money. a lot money. from $0.01 to $1000 isn't bad.

This is a great question, I remember reading really good detailed explanation of it by Peter Surda (I believe)

in short, this is the explanation that best answers your question:


at that point, the price became "NOT ZERO"... I don't think it is fair to call $0 a "price" so, I believe you are searching for the moment that it was something...

here is the source of that quote:

http://nakamotoinstitute.org/mempool/the-original-value-of-bitcoins/


btw... the above quote was not from Peter's work, though his 93 page thesis is well referenced and an interesting read so here it is:
http://dev.economicsofbitcoin.com/mastersthesis/mastersthesis-surda-2012-11-19b.pdf

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/History

I'm not sure the New Liberty Standard so-called "exchange rate" really counts as it seems that it was really just a mining cost index, and not related to actual trades (if indeed anyone was actually trading BTC back then).

http://newlibertystandard.wikifoundry.com/page/2009+Exchange+Rate

Unless anyone knows different?

The starting price of Bitcoin was 0 because you could get some just by clicking on a "get some bitcoins" button in your bitcoin client.

I owned bitcoins in 2013 but when I checked that time, the price was $300 or less. As some have said here that the price was about $0.003 or less when it started. In a  year's time it just crashed to less than $250.

Thanks for sharing this website. It actually started in October 2009 with $1.00 USD = 1,309.03 BTC which means 1 BTC was $0.00007 when it started. Not much worth actually but it actually started growing in 2010-11 if I go as per the chart.

I am not sure how accurate it is. But in the documentary the "Rise and Rise of Bitcoins " , it was said that the starting price/value of bitcoins had been 1 dollar for around 1000 bitcoins. But I doubt there was any exchange around then and so it was only possible for people to trade it with each other.

Well, it means 1 BTC cost the author of that page $0.0007 to mine.  I'm not sure it says a whole lot more than that.

I assume it has to start from zero because practically during that initial stage nobody would know what bitcoin is and since there is very little understanding about how it works, I don't think anybody would actually fork out real cash to pay for it. Furthermore at that time, bitcoin can easily be mined means that even the normal cpu computer can churn out bitcoin for such low computing power put in.

Interesting, thanks! I wasn't even aware of that bitcoinmarket site.



"I just put up a new bitcoin exchange.
Please let me know what you think.
https://mtgox.com"
 :D

I found this post about the guy that swapped 10k Bitcoins for two pizzas. It says at that time you could have sold 10k on Bitcoin Market for $41USD. That works out to $0.0041 per Bitcoin.

The first official (not-test/development) transaction was a couple of large pizzas for like 10,000 BTC.  If we assume it was around $30, then you're looking at $0.003 for its initial market value.  Come to find out it was in my hometown! Jacksonville, FL

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=137.0

No the pizza swap for Bitcoins was on May 22, 2010, but the first trade on the Bitcoin Market exchange was two months earlier than that on March 17, 2010. This is the post announcing the swap of two pizzas for 10,000 BTC on May 22, 2010.


This is the post announcing the first trade on the Bitcoin Market exchange on March 17, 2010.