Friday was the 17th anniversary of Bitcoin. The date goes back to October 31, 2008, when Satoshi Nakamoto released a nine-page whitepaper that explained how to make a peer to peer system for electronic cash.
What started as an open source project during the global financial crisis has become a regular part of policy and market discussions. In early 2009, the network got its first block.
Bitcoin is still a lightning rod for regulation, and after 17 years, it trades near record levels and attracts pension and asset management flows.
Bitcoin is trading for about $110,000 on the anniversary, after briefly dropping below $107,000 earlier in the day.
This keeps the asset close to this year’s highs and gives it a market cap of about $2 trillion, based on a circulating supply of almost 19.9 million coins.
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Day to day changes are still unpredictable, but the asset’s direction of travel over several halvings has brought it into the mainstream portfolios.
Over the past year, institutional plumbing has grown from custody to execution, even though the industry still faces operational risks.
At the same time, more people were able to take part in the capital markets. Our newsroom has talked about how Nasdaq is getting more into crypto and how Gemini is going public on Nasdaq. This shows that big venues and issuers are fine with building in public.
Lawmakers and agencies on both sides of the border are still working on rules for custody, disclosures, and stablecoins.
Earlier this year, our coverage talked about how Senate Democrats came up with a bold plan to change the US crypto market. This shows that legislative text can move liquidity and listings just as much as price catalysts.
Adding BTC to balance sheets over the course of several years is no longer just for one company.
As we said when Strategy added to its Bitcoin trove, boards are considering digital assets as part of their cash management and conviction holdings.
However, most still prefer to invest in them indirectly through funds that makes demand less sensitive to daily swings and more tied to asset-allocation policy, which is a second order driver for investors.
All of this comes after a summer and early fall when leadership changed hands between tokens and sectors.
An altcoin rally heated up, but now people are paying more attention to Bitcoin because macro conditions and ETF flows favour the largest and most liquid token.
The anniversary of the white paper won’t settle long running debates about throughput, fees, or the environment, but it does show how a simple design that stopped double spending without an intermediary became the standard for the rest of crypto.
