All about Bitcoin - Birthday, Billionaires and more

On what was a seemingly regular day as the world inched close to 2009, a yet-unknown man named Satoshi Nakamoto posted a paper on the internet titled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.

And the innocuous 9-page paper, which envisioned “a purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash which would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution”, had proposed a very simple idea- to use a decentralized ledger which would record transactions in batches or blocks, without the need for an intermediary, which eventually manifested itself in the forms of the countless crypto exchanges that have taken root in India and across the world, such as CoinSwitch Kuber.

But this revolutionary, transformative idea very recently touched an all-time high of $66,930 on 20th October, 2021 on the back of the tremendous bullish rally, just before its 13th birthday, rising from a meagre $65.53, where it stood 8 years ago. With an ROI of almost 46,126 percent since its inception, Bitcoin has indeed had a rich, thriving journey, giving the reward of tremendous returns and riches to all those who joined the bitcoin party!

The rise of Bitcoin over the years
The advent and exponential rise of bitcoin has been nothing short of extraordinary! And particularly 2021, when Bitcoin hit a significant landmark of dwelling well into its teens, has been an extremely crucial year for this much-popular, pioneering digital coin. Between 2020-2021, the value of bitcoin has sky-rocketed almost 300 percent!

Infact, consider this. Had you invested Rs 8000 or $100 in Bitcoin all the way back in 2010, when it cost just 6 cents, you would currently be sitting on almost $72 lakhor Rs. 53 crore! Impressive, right? But even if bitcoin caught your eye just before the world plunged into the darkness of the Covid19 pandemic, investing Rs 8000 or 100 dollars in 2019 would have risen to almost Rs 50,000! But fret not, if you’re not yet into this space, now’s the time! Take some cues from El Salvadore!

Earlier, on June 5, Bitcoin was also officially adopted by the Central American country of El Salvadore, officially heralding the era of cryptocurrencies! In recent developments, the country added almost 420 bitcoins, which are worth around 24.6 million dollars, taking the country’s total bitcoin repository to just over 1,120 bitcoins, or estimatedly, around 87.4 million dollars.
Jumping on the crypto bandwagon, payment behemoths PayPal and Visa had earlier also come up with the provision of crypto functionalities for some major cryptos, namely Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and more.

Even Vladimir Putin, the Russian premier, recently added how he perceived value in Bitcoin, which he saw as something that could be employed as a means of payment. Clearly in sync with his positive sentiments was Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has hinted at re-initiation of accepting bitcoin as a mode of payment, having previously halted the same due to exorbitant energy consumption concerns.

Infact, more recently, with the first bitcoin-based ETF (Exchange-traded funds), the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy saw massive inflows worth 1.47 billion dollars last week, just reiterating how thumpingly and resoundingly the crypto space has burgeoned over just the last year!
Welcome to the party, India
Indians seemingly seem to be getting the most of this. With just over 10 crore crypto investors in our country, per a report by Brokerchooser, Indians are significantly and in fact, miles ahead of their US counterparts, who stand second and have just 2.74 crore investors in this space.

Thanks to the surge, popularity and widespread acceptance of various Indian crypto exchanges like CoinSwitch Kuber and more, Indians are warming up to the idea of holding or rather HODL-ing crypto in their investment portfolios! What else would explain the phenomena of India being the seventh most crypto-aware country in the world, or that it is the fifth-largest country in the world in terms of its total population being crypto owners?

If adopting and embracing cryptocurrency was a marathon, Indians would have easily outperformed and out-exceeded the world simply on the basis of the sheer number of crypto-enthusiasts the country has!

This space, indeed, is becoming too big to ignore, like a recent Bank of America (BOFA) report noted, given that almost 221 million people globally have traded in crypto in the recent past. And this is substantiated and bolstered further by revelations from Chainalysis, who estimated the crypto market valuations burgeoning by a solid 706 percent to reach a valuation of $572.5 billion in the Central and Southern Asian subcontinent, of which India is an integral part of.

And not just India, the world seems to be waking up to this aggressive, breakneck rise of cryptocurrency and adopting it equally enthusiastically, if the recent Forbes 400 global richest individuals list is to be believed.

The riches of crypto
Seven crypto billionaires entered this list, with a collective worth of 55.1 billion dollars, with newcomer names including popular crypto-derivatives exchange FTX CEO, the 29-year old Sam Bankman-Fried, who became the richest crypto billionaire with a net worth of 22.5 billion dollars and Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen, who possesses almost 6 billion dollars.

Youth, especially, seem to have graced this billionaires list, with many individuals under the age of 40 making the bulk of their wealth in the cryptocurrency space. Take for instance, Fred Ehrsamm who, all of 33 years of age, has amassed 3,5 billion dollars, co-founding US based crypto exchanges like Coinbase and Paradigm, which are both notable investors of CoinSwitch Kuber.

In comparison to this, only four billionaires made it to the list last year.Notable names this year include bitcoin brothers, namely the Winklevoss brothers. Infact, the growth story has been nothing short of extraordinary. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, who had a net worth of 1 billion dollars last year, has witnessed a 6-fold rise, with his net worth currently standing at $6.5 billion.

The dizzying speed at which crypto is being adopted and is taking over the world is a testament to how crypto is the future! So, have you jumped on the crypto bandwagon and made the most of it yet?

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