Happy Birthday, Bitcoin: Top Cryptocurrency Turns 14

investopedia.com:

Bitcoin fans celebrated the top cryptocurrency's 14th year on Jan. 3 with swarms of birthday posts on social media, signaling the digital asset's resilience even after a prolonged slump in value.

Satoshi Nakamoto, the famed and mysterious Bitcoin creator, mined the first block of Bitcoin on Jan. 3, 2009.Nakamoto received 50 BTC as a reward for the genesis block—a holding that would be a massive sum by today’s standards for the token's value.

His reward can't be spent because Satoshi didn't send the transaction from the genesis block to the global transaction database.It is unclear whether this was intentional.

Investopedia / Hugo Lin

Predictably, a novel asset such as Bitcoin would, at some point, encounter resistance and obstacles. And it did, on several occasions, especially during its early years. Bitcoin’s price tumbled in some particularly notable incidents—but its highs continue to outshine the lows. The theme of the cryptocurrency’s ability to recover strongly after bear markets began to cement themselves during those early years.

The very first Bitcoin transaction took place in October 2009 when a Finnish computer science student named Martti Malmi sold 5,050 BTC, giving each coin a valuation of $0.0009.

One of the most notable early real-world transactions occurred in 2010 when the now-famous Laszlo Hanyecz purchased two pizzas for 10,000 BTC.At today’s value, that would work out to about $167.3 million. The purchase has become a crypto community event is marked on May 22 as Bitcoin Pizza Day.

It wasn’t long before Bitcoin reached a $1 valuation, which happened in February 2011. Shortly afterward, the asset's price climbed to $10 and then to $30, leading to a leap of 30 times for that year. In 2013, it crossed