16 Years of Bitcoin: Here’s How It’s Pacing Against Other Tech Giants
2025-01-05
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But real quick first—
Bitcoin’s pricehas continued its New Year’s holiday rally that began on Dec. 30 when the price notched near $91,500. On Friday, Jan. 3, it was running full steam ahead, briefly tapping $98,690.
That’s a strong rally, with 24H trade volume declining to $35 billion on its $1.94 trillion market cap from $56 billion on Dec. 30. Meanwhile, the Nasdaq Composite fell 1.38%.
Bitcoin is based on a novel design for computers on a decentralized peer-to-peer network called the blockchain. Bitcoin “miners” create a new block every ten minutes containing newly settled transactions and an updated record of all accounts (called addresses) on the chain. The electronic cash platform generated its first block on Jan. 3, 2009.
Now that Bitcoin is old enough to drive a car if it was a human living in the United States, here’s a look back at how Google, Amazon, and Facebook were doing on their sweet sixteen.BTC and Nasdaq Leaders Compared
Bitcoin traded on the BitcoinTalkForum via handshake agreements and PayPal for settlement for an average of $0.00099. A bagful of Bitcoin worth a dollar then is worth some $9.8 billion for the same amount of BTC at current prices today.
That’s a 989,898,990,000,000% (989 trillion percent) increase in the value of BTC in 16 years. It’s a rate of growth so staggering traditional financial markets have only recently begun to comprehend that it’s even real.
Here’s how three Nasdaq tech giants compare:
Google shares debuted in a 2004 initial public offering (IPO) at $85 per share. On Jan. 3, some 11 years later, they’re trading at $193. But after a stock split in 2022, the company issued 20 shares for every investor owned at the time. So adjusted to $3,860, the ROI for Google stock in about 11 years from its IPO date is 4,541%.
Amazon stock debuted at $18 a share in 1997. On Jan. 3, it traded for $224, some 28 years later. But after four stock splits, IPO buyers with any remaining shares have 240 for each one they bought in 1997.
So adjusted to $53,760, the ROI for Amazon stock from its IPO is 298,666%. Bitcoin can give it 11 extra years of growth and still absolutely diminish these gains by comparison.
That’s truly remarkable because Amazon IPO shares are some of the best-performing stock market investments in history.
Facebook’s stock launched at $38 a share in 2012. On Jan. 3, it traded for $604. The company, now called Meta, has never split its stock.
So, the ROI for Facebook after 12 years is 1,589%.16th Birthday Milestones for Bitcoin
At 16 years old, Google acquired London-based AI firm DeepMind Technologies in 2014.
Today, AI is one of the most important narratives in the crypto space adjacent to Bitcoin. At the end of December, cryptocurrency tokens for AI agentsposted 67%days for the 30-day window. Some posted over 200% ROIs.
Amazon closed a $545 million acquisition of Diapers.com and Soap.com in 2010 in its sixteenth year.
Bitcoin is not a corporation and can’t make acquisitions, but today, several corporations are beginning to acquire BTC.That includesJapan’s Metaplanet and Virginia’s MicroStrategy at the moment.
Facebook rebranded to Meta to focus on virtual reality in 2020 when it turned sixteen.
Today, several cryptocurrencies are developing in the VR sector, such as Shiba Inu’s Shibarium, Virtuals Protocol, Axie Infinity, and Decentraland.