The world’s first and largest cryptocurrency, Bitcoin is celebrating its 10th birthday on Wednesday.

It all started when Satoshi Nakamoto released a white paper entitled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”, and on 31st October 2008 this was posted to a cryptography mail list, which has since become the record of how Bitcoin operates today.

It’s impossible to determine exactly how much Bitcoin has increased since its inception 10 years ago. However, taking into account the digital currency’s current price being around $6,300 per coin, and its earliest price being less than $0.01, this would mean Bitcoin’s value has increased over a million-fold in the past decade.

As deVere founder and CEO Nigel Green said in a media statement this week: “Bitcoin is what kickstarted the crypto revolution and it has changed the way the world handles money, makes transactions, does business, and manages assets, amongst other things, forever.  It all began with Bitcoin.”

The launch of Bitcoin led to thousands of other cryptocurrencies and propelled blockchain technology into the global arena.

Although the adoption of the first cryptocurrency was relatively slow to begin with, it truly caught mainstream attention on 22 May 2010. Laszlo Hanyecz, a Florida-based programmer purchased two Papa John’s pizzas from another Bitcoin enthusiast, the first actual Bitcoin transaction. Mr Hanyecz traded 10,000 Bitcoins for the two pizzas, a transaction worth around $64 million today.

Over the past 10 years, Bitcoin’s history has seen a rollercoaster of featured scams, cyber heists, speculation and other risks, but this hasn’t prevented retail and institutional investors putting their money into the digital currency as crypto becomes ever more mainstream.

The blockchain technology underpinning Bitcoin is now behind more than 2,000 cryptocurrencies, including Ethereum, Ripple XRP and EOS, which have a combined market cap of $200bn, as per stats from CoinMarketCap.

Developers are now focusing on applications for many of these blockchains, such as social networks, data storage platforms and video games. 

In addition, governments and large institutions are constructing their own blockchains to manage activities such as accounting and supply chains.

These investors and institutions increasingly understand that cryptocurrencies and blockchain are the future of money.

The deVere CEO commented on Bitcoin’s next decade: “I believe that Bitcoin’s influence and dominance of the cryptocurrency sector will drastically reduce in its second decade.

“This is because as mass adoption of cryptocurrency expands, more and more digital assets will be launched – both by the private and public sectors. This will increase competition for Bitcoin and dent its market share.

“In addition, it is likely that Bitcoin will be hit by the superior technology, features, and problem-solutions, by existing and yet-to-be-released cryptocurrencies.

“There’s an ongoing shift away from fiat money, and the momentum of this shift is only set to increase over the next 10 years.”