How Much is 1 Bitcoin?

How much is 1 bitcoin? If what you mean by that question is “How much would I have to pay to buy 1 bitcoin today?”, the approximate answer is just above to the right.

It should automatically display in your national currency. If it is not, just click the country drop down on the top left to change to your country. 1 bitcoin has had many different historical values since it was first created in 2009.

Until the first recorded trade occurred, 1 bitcoin was basically worth 0 of any other currency. The first recorded trade of bitcoin was in May, 2010, when bitcointalk user laszlo paid 10,000 bitcoins for two pizzas worth $25 total. This pegged 1 bitcoin’s first value at 0.0025 USD.

By the end of 2010, 1 bitcoin was trading on MtGox, the first major bitcoin for fiat exchange (now defunct) for 0.29 USD. During 2011, bitcoin experienced its first major bubble, going as high as $32 before falling back to a low of $2 near year’s end (probably partly due to the July 2011 hacking of MtGox, then the only major bitcoin exchange, that disrupted many people’s faith in the future of the currency).

2012 saw a resurgence of faith in bitcoin. From 4 USD at the beginning of the year to over 13 USD by the end of the year, it seemed those who had already written bitcoin’s obituary had been dead wrong.

During 2013, bitcoin’s popularity soared. It broke straight through the old record of 32 USD all the way up to a high of over 200 USD in April. This turned out at the time to be a bit of a bubble, with prices coming back as low as 70 USD in July 2013. However, by year’s end bitcoin had reached an all time average high of 1132.36 USD before settling back to between 500 and 600 USD by mid 2014.

One thing to keep in mind is that bitcoins are infinitely divisible, and you can purchase partial bitcoins. So if you believe that all the large bitcoin merchants such as NewEgg, 1800flowers, and Fancy now accepting bitcoins will drive up the price of bitcoins, why not purchase a decabit (0.1 bitcoins), a bitcent (0.01 bitcoins), or a millibit (0.001 bitcoins) today?

If you would like to pick up some bitcoins locally, see our how-to here. Can the value of bitcoin still go up? No one knows. But look at it this way: There are currently 252,000 USD in existence for every 1 bitcoin that will ever be in existence. If bitcoin does become the worldwide currency it seeks to be, you may not have missed the boat after all!

Happy spending!
–Jeremy