How Much Was a Bitcoin Worth in 2009?

Have you ever wondered how much one bitcoin cost in 2009?

Here’s a hint – it was effectively free. 

That’s not an exaggeration, either. Bitcoin had no commercial value at the time.

However, that price doesn’t cover the whole story about Bitcoin in 2009, which is why we have written this article. 

We will cover everything you need to know about the price of bitcoin in 2009. For instance, have you ever wondered how people purchased bitcoin in 2009? Or what people even used it for?

How was bitcoin purchased in 2009?

A question people often wonder about 2009-era bitcoin relates to purchasing it. The reality of the situation is that no one in 2009 purchased bitcoin. Why?

Bitcoin was mined and traded amongst cryptography hobbyists for fun. 

A bitcoin exchange did not even exist at the time, which would have made it difficult to actually purchase bitcoin. Not like anyone would have purchased bitcoin anyway.

When was Bitcoin released?

It helps to provide some context about Bitcoin to understand the price in 2009. The reason bitcoin cost so little was because it was released in 2009. 

To be specific, the first Bitcoin block was mined on January 3rd, 2009. 

Did anyone become rich from Bitcoin acquired in 2009?

Probably, yes. 

The difficulty with knowing for certain is that Bitcoin transactions are not linked to any identity, so it’s difficult to track who actually owns the wallet and what they purchase.

However, it’s reasonable to assume that a handful of cryptography hobbyists had a bitcoin wallet in 2009 that was worth a significant amount of money at some point in the future.

There have certainly been millionaires that purchased Bitcoin in the first bull run in 2013 and sold it anywhere from 2017 to the present day. 

Again, people do not publicly state that for obvious reasons. But there are enough wallets with large amounts of Bitcoin that some people became quite wealthy from the bull run.

Why was Bitcoin invented?

A surprising amount of Bitcoin investors do not even know why the currency was created. It only makes sense with some context about the time period. 

Remember, the world economy had collapsed in 2008 and many banks had received bailouts from the federal government.

Frankly, the world was beginning to lose faith in fractional reserve banking, and bitcoin was created as a response to that financial climate. 

It was even referenced in the source code of the first block mined by the founder. The exact message was the following:

“The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.”

Who invented Bitcoin?

Bitcoin was invented by a person or group of people with the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. But who are the people behind the Satoshi Nakamoto name?

No one knows. There have been a few potential candidates that range from Ross Ulbricht to Elon Musk to a government agency.

All the potential candidates deny being Satoshi Nakamoto, though. 

We will likely never know the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto. 

If you’re wondering, Nakamoto has never conducted any transaction with the bitcoin in his wallet. 

When did Bitcoin become popular?

Bitcoin was popular from release. However, it was only popular in the extremely small cryptography industry.

No one outside of cryptography knew about it in 2009.

It slowly became more popular in 2010. As you might have guessed, it became extremely popular with criminals as it was untraceable and extremely to use. 

In fact, the biggest users of bitcoin for many years were those engaged in illegal activity. That likely wasn’t the intention of Satoshi Nakamoto, but that’s how it turned out.

Anyway, Bitcoin reached a milestone when the first real world transaction was conducted in 2010. A user purchased two pizzas for the price of 10,000 bitcoin.

Yes, you read that right – 10,000 bitcoin. The current value of that purchase is about $90 million USD. At the peak of bitcoin, that much bitcoin was worth $190 million USD.

From there, Bitcoin had a few bubbles, but always recovered. The first bubble was when the price of bitcoin jumped from $0.01 to $0.08 in 2010. 

It might not sound like much these days, but that was an 800% increase.

When did Bitcoin go “mainstream?”

Bitcoin first entered the mainstream consciousness from 2013 to 2014 when the prices jumped from around $10/BTC to around $800/BTC.

Bitcoin received mainstream attention around that time period. It was mostly negative media attention, but that didn’t seem to matter. The price soared to astronomical heights.

Of course, the high of $800 would be dwarfed by the bull run of 2017 when bitcoin soared to almost $20,000/BTC.

Yes, that isn’t a typo. Bitcoin really did cost almost $20,000 for one bitcoin.

That didn’t last long, though. The price halved in 2018, and hasn’t fully recovered, yet.

Final Words

We think that covers everything you need to know about the history of Bitcoin and the pricing. 

There is obviously more to the Bitcoin story – a lot more. However, this article should give you a general idea about the pricing of Bitcoin in the early days.

Basically, we can summarize the price of bitcoin in 2009 as free, which begs the question:

Why didn’t we know about Bitcoin in 2009?