Where Did Bitcoin Come From? Bitcoin was invented in 2008 by an unknown person with the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. Satoshi Nakamoto outlined the idea of Bitcoin and how it would operate in a short, and readable, paper. Shortly after the paper was published, the Bitcoin code was open-sourced.
The first Bitcoins were mined in 2009 – likely by Satoshi Nakamoto. The first exchange rate was published in October of 2009 with a rate of $1 US Dollar being equal to 1,309.03 Bitcoins.
In August of 2010, a glitch was discovered that allowed a bad transaction to go through. The bitcoin calculator open-source community rapidly solved the problem and updated the code. In November of 2010, the Bitcoin market cap was valued at $1 million as the price of 1 Bitcoin rose to $0.50. In late 2010, financial traders started developing the Bitcoin market by making short and option trades available.
In February of 2011, the price of Bitcoin rose up to equal $1 US Dollar. In April of 2011, the Bitcoin market cap was valued at $10 million. In June of 2011, the Bitcoin trading marketplace Mt Gox came under attack when there system was hacked and the
price of 1 Bitcoin dropped to $0.01. Trading was suspended for 7 days while Mt Gox dealt with the problem. Because many people use the same username and password for their Mt Gox accounts and Bitcoin wallets, many people had their Bitcoins stolen.
In March of 2012, web host Linode was hacked and nearly 50,000 Bitcoins were stolen. In November of 2012, the mining reward was halved from 50 to 25 Bitcoins.