Bitcoin Is 17 years Old. What surprises you most?

[Solokan]

I'm actually still a beginner in btc and haven't experienced the past like 17 years ago. But what I didn't expect is that BTC is now becoming more popular, and several countries and large companies have adopted it. Investing in BTC or trading in BTC is no longer considered gambling. I was once considered gambling because of my BTC investment. But because of BTC's popularity and the government in my area allowing investment in BTC, it felt like a dream come true. BTC could be as popular as it is now, and I'm no longer ashamed to invest in it

And I certainly didn't expect btc to break a new ATH because I saw that BTC was already expensive, like during the bull run in 2021. But it turns out that in 2025, BTC broke another ATH, which of course reached above $120,000. But for now, I don't think I'll be surprised anymore, even if BTC eventually rises to $1 million or $2 million

[goldkingcoiner]

I am glad all the Anti-Bitcoin hate did not have an effect on Bitcoin. But China certainly did, almost a decade back.

I assume you are talking about the ban?  China did have an effect on Bitcoin but it did not last long enough to consider it a success.  In fact.  None of the attempts were successful, considering Bitcoin continues to exist and in a better state than ever before.

Their effect on Bitcoin was normal, people were afraid Bitcoin would go under a series of bans and attacks leaving it dead in the end.  But on the other hand, a China ban made so many more people interested in what Bitcoin actually is, so while they did crack down on it, other countries were getting more interested in it.  Bitcoin some how survived all of it by coming back after every attack with more interest, more growth, a more fascinating price chart et cetera.

Well yes, I usually agree with you but in this case I think the fact that China still has its back turned on Bitcoin is the greatest barrier towards worldwide Bitcoin adoption. Although I am not even going to mention North Korea or other countries that seem impossible to convince on Bitcoin being the better currency than fiat because they have too much skin in the game. They need fiat to control the masses. Same thing but somewhat softer in China, I am guessing.

But imagine if China became Bitcoin friendly...

[YellowSwap]

Bitcoin has been around for 17 years now.

Looking back, what part of Bitcoin’s journey has surprised you the most?

And what do you think someone from 2010 would find hardest to believe about Bitcoin today?

Maybe the price, institutional adoption, countries holding it, the size of the mining industry, or simply how long Bitcoin has survived.

What would you have found hardest to believe back then?

I honestly wouldn't have believed it if anyone told me in 2020 that the government will be all over Bitcoin as they are today, I would have came up with many valid reasons why the government will always hate Bitcoin.

If anyone told me that this messed up centralised entities will become this friendly with anything that's made to be decentralised out of the box I would have said it's impossible.

I never saw it coming, even those who believed in Bitcoin don't see it coming, that government can be buying Bitcoin backing an entire country today? That's impossible years ago.

[Sammye3]

Bitcoin has been around for 17 years now.

Looking back, what part of Bitcoin’s journey has surprised you the most?

And what do you think someone from 2010 would find hardest to believe about Bitcoin today?

Maybe the price, institutional adoption, countries holding it, the size of the mining industry, or simply how long Bitcoin has survived.

What would you have found hardest to believe back then?

The whole bitcoin story is an illustration of consistency, a story that shaped the lives of so many people. Starting from the criticism, the doubt and now the unforseen successful breakout, every part of its journey was a surprise to so many.

You could imagine a world that never knew there could be any other payment means aside local currencies, now introduced to decentralized digital currencies, who would have thought?

From a couple of cents to hundreds of thousands, that was totally unbelievable as at that time, so the price and decentralization should be the most surprising part of Bitcoin's journey.

[Just Say]

Bitcoin has been around for 17 years now.

Looking back, what part of Bitcoin’s journey has surprised you the most?

And what do you think someone from 2010 would find hardest to believe about Bitcoin today?

Maybe the price, institutional adoption, countries holding it, the size of the mining industry, or simply how long Bitcoin has survived.

What would you have found hardest to believe back then?

The whole bitcoin story is an illustration of consistency, a story that shaped the lives of so many people. Starting from the criticism, the doubt and now the unforseen successful breakout, every part of its journey was a surprise to so many.

You could imagine a world that never knew there could be any other payment means aside local currencies, now introduced to decentralized digital currencies, who would have thought?

From a couple of cents to hundreds of thousands, that was totally unbelievable as at that time, so the price and decentralization should be the most surprising part of Bitcoin's journey.

The price of Bitcoin that would go from a few cents to hundreds of thousands of dollars at the time was probably completely unbelievable, maybe it was possible due to the global adoption of Bitcoin. I also think the most amazing thing about Bitcoin's journey is that it is completely decentralized and has become an important financial asset worldwide.

Even starting from criticism and skepticism, the adoption of this currency is increasing worldwide, as several states in America have passed bills to accept Bitcoin reserves, this currency is being accepted in stores, airports and to my knowledge, El Salvador has previously accepted this currency as legal tender. I can even say that without any marketing team or government support, this currency has become 1.57 trillion dollar asset based only on the trust of users or investors and mathematical code and at the moment it appears that now many people use Bitcoin as an alternative to their local currency, mainly to protect their money from inflation, maybe these are also the most amazing things about Bitcoin's journey.

[davis196]

Bitcoin has been around for 17 years now.

Looking back, what part of Bitcoin’s journey has surprised you the most?

And what do you think someone from 2010 would find hardest to believe about Bitcoin today?

Maybe the price, institutional adoption, countries holding it, the size of the mining industry, or simply how long Bitcoin has survived.

What would you have found hardest to believe back then?

Back in 2010, I knew absolutely nothing about Bitcoin. I do believe that only a small group of geeks and nerds knew anything about Bitcoin back then. My biggest surprise is the fact, that most countries around the world are neutral towards BTC. 15 years ago, I would've expected that most countries would just ban Bitcoin, if Bitcoin became big enough to be seen as a threat to fiat money and traditional banking.
I'm still wondering why the big western countries haven't yet banned Bitcoin and all cryptocurrencies in general.

[MainIbem]

Back in 2010, I knew absolutely nothing about Bitcoin. I do believe that only a small group of geeks and nerds knew anything about Bitcoin back then. My biggest surprise is the fact, that most countries around the world are neutral towards BTC. 15 years ago, I would've expected that most countries would just ban Bitcoin, if Bitcoin became big enough to be seen as a threat to fiat money and traditional banking.
I'm still wondering why the big western countries haven't yet banned Bitcoin and all cryptocurrencies in general.

As much as they can't control Bitcoin, they're wise to note it's benefits and use it individually or as a store of value to their nations, that why you hear about several big nations talk about owning a Bitcoin/cryptocurrency reserve. They can still have partial control through exchanges and benefit from tax policies. The government might not like decentralization but they won't throw away opportunities of generating funds from it through taxes.

[Renampun]

From the beginning I was sure that Bitcoin would be adopted by more people, but I didn't expect it to be that fast.. especially when more institutions started buying Bitcoin, it made the price of Bitcoin higher and made Bitcoin the most widely recognized and valuable digital assets.. even some countries that previously didn't consider Bitcoin, now even make Bitcoin their strategic reserve, it was so unexpected that in the past few years Bitcoin has developed that much.

[SilverCryptoBullet]

Well yes, I usually agree with you but in this case I think the fact that China still has its back turned on Bitcoin is the greatest barrier towards worldwide Bitcoin adoption. Although I am not even going to mention North Korea or other countries that seem impossible to convince on Bitcoin being the better currency than fiat because they have too much skin in the game. They need fiat to control the masses. Same thing but somewhat softer in China, I am guessing.

Living in nations like China is not easy as their government can entirely change policies after one night and citizens are always passively in any policy change. China want to beat the USA but we have witnessed that Trump and USA want to make blockchain and cryptocurrency are like motivations for their nation in coming years and decades.

To compete with the USA, will China stay outside this big game?
I don't think so.

But imagine if China became Bitcoin friendly...

It will be massive but Bitcoin adoption is already good with many challenge, barriers from China in past years. Even their government strictly enforces many things in China mainland, locals still figure out their own ways to use what they think important and helpful for their lives, of course in legal aspect such actions are dangerous for Chinese.

China's long history of Bitcoin fud timeline.

[henmark]

Bitcoin has been around for 17 years now.

Looking back, what part of Bitcoin’s journey has surprised you the most?

And what do you think someone from 2010 would find hardest to believe about Bitcoin today?

Maybe the price, institutional adoption, countries holding it, the size of the mining industry, or simply how long Bitcoin has survived.

What would you have found hardest to believe back then?

I honestly wouldn't have believed it if anyone told me in 2020 that the government will be all over Bitcoin as they are today, I would have came up with many valid reasons why the government will always hate Bitcoin.

If anyone told me that this messed up centralised entities will become this friendly with anything that's made to be decentralised out of the box I would have said it's impossible.

I never saw it coming, even those who believed in Bitcoin don't see it coming, that government can be buying Bitcoin backing an entire country today? That's impossible years ago.

Just because governments have finally started to accept Bitcoin, it doesn't mean they don't hate it anymore or aren't against it, but it's just that they've realized that they can't push it away because its craze and popularity are unmatchable, people just kept getting involved over time and then also institutions started getting involved, and then governments realized that they can't stop it anymore, so they decided that instead of just trying to resist it and push it away, they decided they are going to allow it and then just regulate it and everything around it so that they can also benefit from its usage by taxing people who are involved and using cryptocurrencies.

It's true that a lot of people actually didn't expect this to happen this quickly, but I think it was expected sooner or later, because governments, at least all of them, could never ban or abandon Bitcoin completely because it was growing so fast that it became the fastest growing asset of the world in such a short period leaving assets that have been around for centuries behind in this race.

For me I think the most surprising thing is the level of institutional adoption, which occurred pretty early.

[The funny mimi]

Bitcoin has been around for 17 years now.

Looking back, what part of Bitcoin’s journey has surprised you the most?

And what do you think someone from 2010 would find hardest to believe about Bitcoin today?

Maybe the price, institutional adoption, countries holding it, the size of the mining industry, or simply how long Bitcoin has survived.

What would you have found hardest to believe back then?

What surprises me the most is how long Bitcoin has been survived and continued to grow despite all the criticism crashes and uncertainty around it I think someone from 2010 would find the level of institutional adoption and the price today extremely hard to believe back then I don't think many people could have imagined Bitcoin becoming this big.

[YOSHIE]

Bitcoin Is 17 years Old. What surprises you most?

The most surprising thing for me personally, in the more or less 17 years that Bitcoin has entered the crypto market, is extraordinary in my assessment of its "resilience". You can imagine Bitcoin without an owner, parent, leader, no one controls it and so on, but Bitcoin from when it was first created in 2009 until now has grown and developed into an asset with a value of thousands of dollars, not only that which makes me the most surprising, you must know that Bitcoin is opposed in various countries by governments, but Bitcoin is not afraid, Bitcoin runs like water in a river whatever obstacles and obstacles but carried by the flow of water, people have to go with the flow Bitcoin, It's not that Bitcoin has to follow the flow of humans, what's even more surprising is that you need to know about predictions/predictions, everything is broken and dead in front of Bitcoin, there is no prediction/prediction that really takes Bitcoin in an accurate direction, do you feel that way.

Not to mention I told you about the creation of Satoshi Nakamoto, which is still mysterious to this day, not to mention Bitcoin as a digital currency but now it has been used as a reserve asset in developing countries, Is that not surprising and there are many things that are still mysterious and surprising about Bitcoin, if told very long, short is enough.

[bangjoe]

The most surprising thing for me is that I live in the world of blockchain, what I eat it comes from I first got to know bitcoin even today, just sitting in front of a computer and seeing the movement of money in many chains that have grown rapidly, bitcoin brought me to this point.

The least expected is the price increase, anyone here can't predict the price of bitcoin, even when it starts to touch $10k and then $100k and later maybe $1 million, and it will always be something surprising in the midst of many world doubts about it.

[SeriouslyGiveaway]

The most surprising thing for me is that I live in the world of blockchain, what I eat it comes from I first got to know bitcoin even today, just sitting in front of a computer and seeing the movement of money in many chains that have grown rapidly, bitcoin brought me to this point.

There are blockchains and projects before Bitcoin but Bitcoin is a first successful decentralized blockchain project. Bitcoin laid an important foundation for the blockchain industry as well as cryptocurrency market.

Bitcoin prehistory is important but history since Bitcoin White paper release and Bitcoin Genesis Block mined by Satoshi Nakamoto are more important.

It's classic
https://www.thetimes03jan2009.com/

The least expected is the price increase, anyone here can't predict the price of bitcoin, even when it starts to touch $10k and then $100k and later maybe $1 million, and it will always be something surprising in the midst of many world doubts about it.

No one can predict price accurately and the Bitcoin market is both volatile and unpredictable but with investors, they don't have to predict price after knowing about Bitcoin fundamentals. They only need to accumulate bitcoin, hold their coins safely, and wait for adoption growth, value increase and price growth too.

[Slow death]

There were many things that surprised me. I'll mention a few:

1 - The price of Bitcoin reaching $126,000, knowing that 17 years ago it wasn't even worth $100.

2 - The Bitcoin market capitalization reached $1.57 trillion, knowing that 17 years ago it was practically nonexistent.

3 - Today there are 8,167 altcoins thanks to the existence of Bitcoin.

4 - Today there are 244 exchanges where Bitcoin can be traded.

5 - Today there are large companies that have bought Bitcoin, companies like: Strategy, Twenty One Capital, SpaceX

Today, millions of people buy Bitcoin in over 100 countries, so we're talking about a huge leap forward in such a short period of time as 17 years. It was a great technological advancement in my opinion. It's true that there are still things that need improvement, such as people adopting the mindset of using Bitcoin as a payment method and governments creating favorable conditions to make it easy for anyone in any country to use Bitcoin as a payment method. But I believe that in another 17 years, Bitcoin will be widely used as a payment method in any country.

[snowpega]

Bitcoin has been around for 17 years now.

Looking back, what part of Bitcoin’s journey has surprised you the most?
...

If i have to share my personal point of view on this then i would say, Its ROI(return-on-investment). Some days ago, I was reading a post in a random Telegram group which showed a comparison of all assets available for trading in crypto or the stock market. And in that table, Bitcoin was at the top of all those assets which returned the most profit in the long term. And whatever profit amount Bitcoin returned for holding only $1000 and this literally surprised me.

And gold was also mentioned in that table, and literally Gold ROI(return-on-investment) was nothing if we compare it with the ROI(return-on-investment) of Bitcoin. As far as I remember now, I think gold ROI was below $8k, and Bitcoin ROI literally outperformed it with a total of almost $9 million. I have never seen any other asset that returned that amount of profit with very little investment. This is why Bitcoin is well known as digital gold. DYOR!

[BlackHatCoiner]

What would you have found hardest to believe back then?

If you told a 2010 bitcoiner that their magic internet money was eventually going to be safely tucked away in a boomer's 401(k), then I don't think they'd really believe it.

That, and the fact that people are still writing articles about who Satoshi might be.

[Btcdeybodi]

What has surprised me the most is that the government who criticised and called Bitcoin a scam has now made Bitcoin a Strategic reserve asset, isn't that marvellous?

I'm still surprised that not everyone had known Bitcoin upon the number of years it had stayed, many in the world doesn't know what Bitcoin is and had never heard of it, I am still surprised.

This is not supposed to be surprising, after all not everyone that has access to the internet since the last 17 years. Not everyone is literate enough to make use of the Internet, some people don't even have Internet enabled phones in the last 17 years so there's no way to know about Bitcoin when they don't make use of the Internet. It will interest you to know that some persons still saves their money in secret places at their homes, they don't even have any dealings with banks. That's the extent that poverty has made some persons not to be used to modern facilities talkmore of digital currency like Bitcoin.

What is that government?
May you share the nation of that government?

The US government. In 2021, Donald Trump called Bitcoin a scam during his interview with  Fox Business, he said that he hates Bitcoin because it is like a competition against the United States dollar. Fast forward to March 2025, same Donald Trump signed an executive order to declare Bitcoin as strategic reserve asset, that answers your question.

[SeriouslyGiveaway]

What has surprised me the most is that the government who criticised and called Bitcoin a scam has now made Bitcoin a Strategic reserve asset, isn't that marvellous?

What is that government?
May you share the nation of that government?

I only knew that the USA government through CIA invited Gavin Andresen to visit their headquarter and have a speech about Bitcoin there, after Satoshi Nakamoto left Bitcoin community and disappeared.

Gavin will visit the CIA.

[Antotena]

Bitcoin has been around for 17 years now.

Looking back, what part of Bitcoin’s journey has surprised you the most?

And what do you think someone from 2010 would find hardest to believe about Bitcoin today?

I think everyone knows already, people that find it hard to accept Bitcoin sold and it's full of regret why they sold the only thing that could change their life without doing much or miss the opportunity to buy one good thing and they refused. Some people even bought bit guess what, they sold their Bitcoin when the price reach a particular price and they wished they never think of outsmarting the market, the market humble those that don't hold.

Maybe the price, institutional adoption, countries holding it, the size of the mining industry, or simply how long Bitcoin has survived.

What would you have found hardest to believe back then?

You know what's heart breaking in all of these, there are institutions that have shares and assets in many investments that have bashed Bitcoin, called it all sort of names because of inferiority complex, they didn't thimk Bitcoin would be adopted by some people, some countries had the chance to use a part of their reserve to buy Bitcoin maybe they would have been able to change their reserve today for better. There is nothing that comes close to holding Bitcoin.