Bitcoin turns 17 years old today: from ‘magic money’ to global asset

Today marks Bitcoin’s 17th anniversary.

Fast forward to today, seventeen years later, that creation has now become one of the most disruptive financial inventions in modern history, surviving ridicule, banks, crashes, and countless declarations of its death. Happy Birthday, Bitcoin!

17 years old

In its infancy, BTC was little more than an experiment among cryptographers and libertarians. There wasn’t really a known price, there were no exchanges where you could openly trade it, and there was no clear use case beyond peer-to-peer value transfer, which is what the whitepaper was really intended to do.

The first known transaction took place in May 2010 – the infamous Bitcoin Pizza Day, as it is now known, when 10,000 BTC was used to purchase two pizzas. At the time, however, Bitcoin was dismissed as a nerd’s toy, a failed attempt at digital cash, or as “magic internet money” with no intrinsic value.

Later, the first real mainstream attention was for all the wrong reasons. The Darknet marketplaces flourished in the early 2010s and BTC became associated with illegal activities, drugs and crime, gaining a reputation as the currency of the underworld. Traditional media quickly labeled it a tool for criminals, and regulators warned it had no legitimate future.

That stigma persisted for years, despite later data showing that illegal activity represented only a small portion of all BTC transactions.

From death to trillions of dollars in assets

Bitcoin’s debut on the stock market made it clear that the asset will see some increased volatility. It rose, it crashed, then rose again, only to crash again and then rise again. This scenario has repeated itself countless times over the past decade. Considering that some of those corrections were sometimes 50%, 60%, or even 80%, haters took every moment to call it “death.” In fact, there are about 450 such cases documented since 2010.

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It was called a bell or ‘rat poison square’. It has been compared to tulip mania, and renowned economists have warned that it would go to zero. However, that never happened.

Instead, it continued to prove them wrong. The narrative began to change during the 2017 bull run and was amplified after the COVID-19 crash and subsequent rally. As governments printed unprecedented amounts of fiat currencies, Bitcoin’s fixed supply of 21 million units began to matter.

Gradually, it was no longer presented simply as ‘digital cash’. It became something more: for some digital gold, for others a protection against monetary reduction, or even a long-term store of value.

It was further legitimized in 2024 when about a dozen spot Bitcoin ETFs were launched in the United States. It later became a key factor in the country’s presidential elections, and there is talk of a US-based strategic reserve of BTC. Not bad for a teenager.

Community celebrates

Of course, so was the ever-vocal cryptocurrency community to celebrate quickly The anniversary of Bitcoin, which helped launch a multi-billion dollar industry. Strategy’s Saylor, the champion behind the world’s largest corporate BTC holder, published an orange cake on X and wished the cryptocurrency a happy birthday, while Lucky posted:

Seventeen years ago today, Satoshi Nakamoto introduced Bitcoin to the world.

What started as a quiet experiment is now a global monetary network.

From a niche idea shared online to a multi-trillion dollar asset class, Bitcoin has reshaped finance, trust and sovereignty, proving… pic.twitter.com/z5SLDWDygZ

— Happy (@LLuciano_BTC) January 3, 2026