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15 years of Bitcoin: Digital currencies are gaining popularity
An advertisement for Bitcoin. photo
© Kin Cheung/AP/dpa
After the major crash of the digital currency Bitcoin two years ago, the industry was stuck in an icy “crypto winter”. But on the 15th anniversary of Bitcoin there is at least a thaw again.
Digital investment products such as Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are in greater demand than they have been in a year and a half. This emerges from a study by crypto expert James Butterfill from CoinShares, which was published in Saint Helier on the Channel Island of Jersey.
Accordingly, digital investment products recorded inflows of $326 million per week (around €306 million). This is the highest value since July 2022. The new crypto boom is almost entirely due to the demand for the oldest cryptocurrency, Bitcoin. Bitcoin alone accounted for 90 percent of the inflows ($296 million).
Bitcoin has existed for exactly 15 years. The Bitcoin white paper was published on October 31, 2008 by an individual or group under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. It forms the basis for how Bitcoin works and describes a decentralized, digital payment system that is based on a decentralized database (“blockchain”).
Bitcoin experienced its highest value to date on November 8, 2021 at just under $69,000. Within a year, the price then plummeted to around $16,000, partly because the industry was shaken by a number of scandals such as the crash of the FTX crypto exchange. FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried has to answer in a New York court in one of the largest fraud trials in the USA.
On the rise
In the past few months, however, there have been repeated concrete indications that traditional banks and financial investors such as the asset manager Blackrock are taking advantage of the opportunity and entering the crypto market at low prices. The speculation primarily revolves around the first introduction of a Bitcoin spot ETF in the USA: an index fund that tracks the current price of the cryptocurrency. Against this background, the Bitcoin price had recently approached the $35,000 mark again.
Butterfill, head of research at CoinShares, explained that the price increase was due to growing investor optimism as the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is close to approving a listed Bitcoin ETF in the US: “The approval of a listed Bitcoin ETF is very likely in the coming months and will represent a regulatory milestone for the industry.”