Bitcoin's 16th Birthday: What A $100 Investment In 2009 Is Worth Today

If you had purchased $1,000 worth of Bitcoin purchased 10 years ago, you'd have a lot of money today. Bitcoin certainly wasn't as widely recognized in 2014 as it is today and indeed those early cryptocurrency investors were rewarded handsomely for their foresight. However, what if you had an even earlier involvement in Bitcoin? The year 2009, to be exact. 

As it so happens, 2009 is very significant for the flagship cryptocurrency because January 3 of that year happens to be the date of its inception. Though, early adopters of Bitcoin certainly couldn't pull up their Robinhood app and simply press the "buy" button to invest, nor were there any cryptocurrency ETFs. Instead, one of the earliest venues for establishing the value of Bitcoin was New Liberty Standard Exchange, which opened its electronic doors in October 2009.

To calculate the value of Bitcoin, New Liberty Standard considered the amount and cost of the electricity required to power the computers that mined the coins. According to New Liberty Standard, the first known transaction trading Bitcoin for U.S. dollars occurred sometime in late 2009. In particular, one savvy crypto enthusiast paid $5.02 via PayPal in exchange for 5,050 Bitcoins. That equates to a price of about 1/10 of one cent (actually $0.00099) for each coin. 

Nowadays, Bitcoin has peaked at more than $100,000 for a single coin. It's all-time closing high of $106,140.60 per coin occurred on December 17, 2024. Since then, it's dropped slightly to a still impressive $102,234.75 at the time and date this piece was written. That means that the 5,050 coins acquired for $5.02 in the first known Bitcoin purchase ever are now worth $516,285,487.50. Yes, that's more than $500 million returned from a $5 initial investment in only ~15 years.

Servicing the title of this article, if that same Bitcoin true-believer had $100 to invest in late-2009 rather than $5, that c-note would be worth $10,326,742,424.20 today. For the decimal-challenged among us, that's over $10 billion garnered from a single $100 Bitcoin purchase at the close of the aughts decade.

Impressive though they may be, those incredible opportunities weren't easily accessible by the layperson. But that would change in mid-2010 as an increasing number of exchanges sprouted up. As a byproduct of the king of cryptocurrency's growing popularity, mid-2010 would also mark the date when prices were reliably published and tracked.

According to historical data provided by Investing.com, Bitcoin spent most of 2010 vacillating in value between 10 cents and 30 cents per coin, which is a point in time and price where more mainstream — though still prescient — investors likely would have the opportunity to buy in. 

Perhaps one of the most outrageous tales of this era happened in May, 2010. That's when a Florida programmer and bitcoin miner named Laszlo Hanyecz spent 10,000 units of bitcoin in exchange for two pizzas from the Papa Johns chain. Kudos go to Hanyecz for this quirky transaction. According to MarketWatch, the historic pizza purchase is "widely viewed as the first time a virtual currency had been used to buy anything in the real world." That said, we're betting that the early-adopter is kicking himself today. Those 10,000 spent coins are worth $1,022,347,500 today. While $1 billion for a couple pizzas does seem a little steep, at least they were large size. 

Only time will tell if lightning will continue to strike for those who loyally HODL the blue-chip electronic currency. However, what we do know is that the reward for mining coins continues to decrease through "halving", which maintains scarcity. As well, there's a finite amount of coins which will eventually be produced. That figure of 21 million coins maximum is expected to be reached in the year 2040.