The history of bitcoin and why it is important - Presentation by Tone Vays

This presentation covers the history of bitcoin and it's price since 0.1$ in 2010. I have summarized what I could.

The first realization of bitcoin's value comes from the solution to the double spend problem. Some economist did a talk on this subject and the price went to 0.5$.

In 2010, WikiLeaks was cut off from donation from visa master card and Paypal. A developer suggested bitcoin should be used and just the speculation of this possibility drove the price to over a dollar. WikiLeaks did not except bitcoins yet.

Silk Road popped up, a place where you could buy illegal stuff using a decentralized browser and bitcoin as the payment method. The price shot from 1$ to 30$ while WikiLeaks started excepting bitcoin as donations on top of the silk road hype.

This was the biggest bubble bitcoin has ever seen and caused it to crash to 2$, from 30$.

2012 was a quite time for bitcoin, at the time there was only 1 exchange in Japan, Mount Gox, that was originally a place to trade magic the gathering trading cards, and the first to integrate bitcoin trading. China was getting on board with more exchanges. In the summer of 2012, bitcoin was featured on cctv, a Chinese government channel, and helped drove the price back up to 13$, followed by a 50% correction.

In 2013 the price rose to 250$, presumably because of the Cyprus banking crisis. They ended up taking 6.75% of any money in your bank that you had under $100,000, and 9.9% of any money over $100 000. The realization that a bank or government can confiscate your money when they run into a financial crisis is a reason why people want bitcoin. This massive increase in price led to a 75$ correction down to 60$.

October 1st 2013, the feds finally shut down silk road and the price fell from 120$ to 85$ for only a day. This led to multiple unsafe alternatives but alternatives non the less, senators still seemed intrigued, and the price continued to 1200$ as more adoption took place since mount gox also imploded at that time.

Since 2014 the price trickled to 150$, another 90% correction, taking little over a year to recover. Supply, demand and speculation was driving the price and debates on how to introduce bitcoin to the world started. Paypal wanted to integrate bitcoin and was advised not to since all these 'spent' bitcoins would be sold on the open market in order for the merchant to receive his cash, and would drive the price down. The use cases was debated for bitcoin as a means to donate or purchase to a cause, service or product that the government does not approve of, as well as transferring value cross borders and gambling. More banks were failing in Europe and governments around the world was trying to get rid of cash so they could gain more control on your finances.

Bitcoin climbed back over 1000$ and throughout 2017 the price went to $20 000, and we are on a 80$ correction at the moment that touched $6000, will we go lower this time? we are almost back to $10 000.