{"id":239718,"date":"2017-11-27T14:56:06","date_gmt":"2017-11-27T12:56:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=239718"},"modified":"2017-11-27T14:58:23","modified_gmt":"2017-11-27T12:58:23","slug":"when-bitcoin-cost-r7-20","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cryptocurrency\/239718-when-bitcoin-cost-r7-20.html","title":{"rendered":"When Bitcoin cost R7.20"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The price of Bitcoin reached new highs this weekend, with the cryptocurrency <a href=\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cryptocurrency\/239692-bitcoin-rockets-through-r150000.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>breaking through R150,000<\/strong><\/a> on local exchanges.<\/p>\n<p>On international exchanges, the price of Bitcoin passed $9,000.<\/p>\n<p>Regardless of the reasons for Bitcoin&#8217;s climb, or whether this is a bubble waiting to pop, early investors who cash out now will see astronomical returns.<\/p>\n<p>If you invested at the start of 2017, you would be smiling &#8211; but the real early adopters are the biggest winners.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">The climb<\/h3>\n<p>Cryptocurrency exchange Luno has published an infographic detailing the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.luno.com\/blog\/en\/post\/bitcoin-timeline\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>history of Bitcoin<\/strong><\/a>, which tracks currency&#8217;s journey &#8220;to the moon&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The journey starts in the late 1990s, and really gets underway in the early 2000s &#8211; following the creation of &#8220;cypherpunk money&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Bitcoin&#8217;s first block on its blockchain was released in January 2009, after which the first exchange rate for Bitcoin was established in October 2009 &#8211; with $1 equal to 2,300 BTC.<\/p>\n<p>The growth of Bitcoin then continued until &#8220;pizza day&#8221; on 22 May 2010.<\/p>\n<p>The day is remembered for when a man from Florida paid a Londoner 10,000 Bitcoin for a Pizza. The price of Bitcoin soon increased 10-fold after that, reaching a new high of $0.08.<\/p>\n<p>On 9 February 2011, Bitcoin reached a new milestone &#8211; parity with the US dollar.<\/p>\n<p>The rand was trading at around R7.20 to the dollar at the time, meaning you could have bought 1 BTC for R7.20.<\/p>\n<p>For R72, you could have bought 10 Bitcoin &#8211; which is worth over R1.5 million today.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">Bitcoin over time<\/h3>\n<p>The graphic below shows Bitcoin&#8217;s journey from its inception, to late 2017.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/Bitcoin-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-239720\" src=\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/Bitcoin-1.jpg\" alt=\"Bitcoin\" width=\"640\" height=\"6329\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">Now read:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cryptocurrency\/239374-swissquote-protects-investors-against-bitcoin-volatility.html\" rel=\"bookmark\">Swissquote protects investors against Bitcoin volatility<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 2011, you could have picked up one Bitcoin for $1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":219068,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44696],"tags":[187,35],"class_list":["post-239718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cryptocurrency","tag-bitcoin","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239718"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239718"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239718\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":239722,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239718\/revisions\/239722"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}