What is the price of bitcoin today?
As of 8 a.m. ET, the price of bitcoin, or 1 BTC, was $61,273.72. The crypto’s highest intraday price in the past year was $73,750.07 on March 14, 2024.
Bitcoin chart
The above chart pulls data as of 8 a.m. ET daily. It doesn’t display intraday highs or lows.
Bitcoin prices
*The return comparisons are as of 8 a.m. ET.
Bitcoin’s all-time high was on March 14, 2024, trading at $73,750.07 per bitcoin. The lowest intraday price that the crypto traded in the past year was $26,558.32 on Oct. 12, 2023. The original crypto is up by 125% year over year.
BTC had very humble beginnings when it was launched in January 2009. Since then, the world’s first cryptocurrency has completely shifted global financial markets and amassed a global market capitalization of $1.21 trillion.
The crypto is also becoming a popular alternative to government-backed fiat currencies, such as the U.S. dollar, which tend to lose value over time due to inflation.
What is bitcoin? And how does bitcoin work?
Bitcoin runs on a groundbreaking blockchain-based network powered by a collection of global users. It allows anyone with internet access worldwide to make financial transactions that completely circumvent banks or other financial or government intermediaries.
Bitcoin’s security system is centered on its cryptography. All bitcoin transactions are validated by miners, who use high-powered computers to solve complex mathematical puzzles and create new blocks of verified transactions on the blockchain.
Since its launch, bitcoin has inspired thousands of other cryptocurrencies. While many additional cryptocurrencies have become successful, bitcoin remains the most valuable and popular globally.
How is bitcoin’s price determined?
Because bitcoin does not represent ownership of tangible assets and does not generate earnings, revenue, or cash flow, its price is determined exclusively by supply and demand.
Bitcoin’s network automatically releases new bitcoins to miners each time they verify and add a new block of transactions to the blockchain. The total supply of bitcoin is capped at 21 million BTC.
Given bitcoin’s fixed supply, demand is the primary variable determining its price. This demand fluctuates mainly based on investor sentiment.
Bitcoin’s starting price
The first recorded bitcoin price came in late 2009 when users in the BitcoinTalk online forum exchanged 5,050 BTC for $5.02 via PayPal. This transaction valued bitcoin at about $0.00099 per BTC, or about one-tenth of a cent.
Bitcoin halvings
Bitcoin’s network undergoes a process known as halving after 210,000 blocks of transactions are added to the blockchain.
Miners receive a set BTC reward for validating new blocks. The process is called a halving because it cuts that reward in half. Halving is crucial because it limits the BTC supply and supports its price over time.
Does bitcoin halving increase BTC’s price?
Less new bitcoin should ostensibly push up prices. But that doesn’t always happen.
A halving doesn’t directly impact prices, so it isn’t a guaranteed bullish catalyst. In the past, BTC prices hit a bottom about a year before the next halving. They then rose for more than a year after the halving. But that doesn’t necessarily mean the pattern will repeat.
Bitcoin price history
2010 – 2019
The first bitcoin exchanges launched in 2010. BTC grew to over $1 by 2011.
It took another two years for the next thousandfold increase. The price of BTC pushed past $1,000 by late 2013.
Prices continued to snowball from there. In November 2017, they exceeded $10,000. The following month, when CME Group announced the first bitcoin futures contracts, prices cleared $20,000.
But 2018 saw a reversal, with prices falling under $4,000.
2020 – 2024
The crypto soared during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. A combination of government stimulus funds and low interest rates helped boost bitcoin.
But interest rates started rising in 2022, prompting a price drop. That decline exposed some cracks in the crypto industry, including overextended companies. The result was a string of layoffs and bankruptcies that likely dragged prices down.
Prices rose again in 2023. On March 14, 2024, BTC hit a new intraday high of $73,750.07.
How to buy bitcoin
Investors can buy bitcoin on popular cryptocurrency exchanges, such as Binance, Coinbase and Kraken.
Any investor buying bitcoin directly must store their BTC in a bitcoin wallet. It’s similar to storing paper money in a physical wallet. In this case, bitcoin investors store the privacy keys needed to send or receive cryptocurrency in the wallet.
Bitcoin wallets can be hardware wallets that resemble USB sticks or software wallet apps that store BTC on a smartphone or another device.
Hot wallets are bitcoin wallets that are connected to the internet. In contrast, cold wallets are not connected to the internet. Hot wallets are considered more convenient than cold ones but riskier because of online access.
Read more: How to buy bitcoin
Bitcoin ETFs
In addition to buying bitcoin directly, investors can indirectly speculate on the bitcoin market via bitcoin funds.
In January 2024, the SEC also approved several bitcoin spot ETFs. These funds hold the cryptocurrency rather than crypto futures contracts and trade on major U.S. exchanges.
The approval of bitcoin exchange-traded funds represents a resounding institutional validation of the cryptocurrency, marking a departure from its initial reputation as a speculative and volatile asset.
Frequently asked questions (FAQs)
Bitcoin’s all-time high was $73,750.07, which it reached on March 14, 2024.
One BTC represents one bitcoin. It was valued at $61,273.72 as of 8 a.m. ET.
