If you’re at least familiar with what cryptocurrencies are, you definitely know the story of what could be the most expensive meal in history. Yes, we’re talking about that one guy on the Internet, going by the name of Laszlo Hanyecz, who once paid 10,000 bitcoins for anybody willing to bring him two pepperoni pizzas. Here you can order cryptocurrencies directly from our site.

But this was happening back in 2010 and ever since, Bitcoin, as well as cryptocurrencies, in general, made history! However, how did everything start and which were the most important moments over all these years? 

Let’s take a few minutes and talk about the history of these complex digital assets, shall we?

The Birth of Bitcoin

Everything started on October 31, 2008, when Satoshi Nakamoto published his already famous Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash whitepaper, in which he was basically presenting what the Bitcoin network can do. And no, we still don’t know if this is his real name or if he’s really from Japan. 

A few months later, on January 3, 2009, the same Mr. Nakamoto, managed to mine the first block of the Bitcoin network, thus piloting the technology behind it. 

To think about it, some pizzas made cryptocurrencies popular

Two months before the pizza episode, presented above, which was happening in May 2010, the first crypto exchange, bitcoinmarket.com, was launched, while later that year, the now defunct Mt.Gox was also introduced. 

Bitcoin started picking up nicely and in February 2011 reached parity with the United States Dollar. New cryptocurrencies were also developed and, by the end 2013, the market counted almost twenty different digital assets, as names like Litecoin and XRP (Ripple) were making their first steps. 

The Rise and Fall

As cryptocurrencies were continuing to grow in terms of popularity and market cap, the first ‘incidents’ appeared. 

In 2013, Mt. Gox was the largest crypto exchange in the world, dealing with over 70% of all Bitcoin transactions on the market at that moment. But this didn’t last for long, as 850,000 BTC, worth over $460 million at that time, were stolen. 

As expected, Bitcoin’s price went down by almost 50% and needed more than two years to recover. But exchanges kept appearing, as well as another ambitious project, the Ethereum network, which also introduced the ERC-20 tokens, currently used by over 200,000 projects. 

ICOs - to infinity and beyond imagination

2015 brought us the first ICO - initial coin offering - and this was basically the moment when the entire world went crazy about cryptocurrencies. Tons of projects appeared as it was enough to have one idea to turn it into an ICO. 

Everything culminated in December 2017, when Bitcoin was very close to reaching $20,000, while other digital assets were selling for ridiculous amounts of money. 

Ever since, the market stabilized. It’s been a while since the majority of tokens - at least those with real use cases behind them - reached a state of stability. Their popularity is still growing, but not as rapid as 2-3 years ago. One thing is clear: they are here to stay and, soon enough, they will play very important roles in our lifes.