What is the current price of bitcoin?
As of 8 a.m. ET, the price of bitcoin, or 1 BTC, was $68,235.83. The crypto’s highest intraday price in the past year was $73,750.07 on March 14, 2024.
Bitcoin price chart
The chart above pulls data as of 8 a.m. ET daily and doesn’t display intraday highs or lows.
Bitcoin prices
*The return comparisons are as of 8 a.m. ET.
Bitcoin reached an all-time high of $73,750.07 on March 14, 2024. The lowest intraday price it traded in the past year was $29,481.75 on Oct. 21, 2023. Bitcoin is up 128% year over year.
The original cryptocurrency debuted in January 2009. It’s now a major asset with a market cap of $1.35 trillion.
Bitcoin has become a popular alternative to government-backed fiat currencies, which tend to lose value over time due to inflation.
What is bitcoin? And how does bitcoin work?
Bitcoin launched the world’s first blockchain-based network to make financial transactions. It’s powered by millions of global users. Anyone with internet access can make financial transactions without banks or government intermediaries.
Every transaction on the blockchain is validated by miners. Miners use high-powered computers to solve complex math problems and create new blocks in the chain. They’re paid with newly created BTC for their work maintaining the network.
In the years since its launch, thousands of cryptocurrencies have tried to recreate bitcoin’s success. While some have grown rapidly, none have matched bitcoin’s value or popularity.
What determines bitcoin’s price?
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 bitcoin transaction occurred in late 2009, when 5,050 BTC traded for $5.02. At the time, the price of 1 BTC was about a tenth of a cent.
Bitcoin halvings
Each time 210,000 blocks of transactions are added to the bitcoin blockchain, the network automatically undergoes a process known as halving.
Bitcoin miners receive a set amount of BTC as a reward for their services to validate a block. But that reward is cut in half each time a halving occurs. In other words, about once every four years, bitcoin miners get a 50% pay cut.
Bitcoin halving is essential in limiting bitcoin’s supply and theoretically supporting its price.
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.
A history of bitcoin prices
2010 – 2019
The first online bitcoin exchanges emerged in 2010. The price per coin grew from the $1 threshold in 2011.
From there, BTC prices continued to climb, reaching the $1,000 mark in late 2013. Its popularity and trading volumes snowballed four years later.
In November 2017, bitcoin reached $10,000 and peaked at over $20,000 roughly a month later. The rally was partly driven by CME Group’s announcement to launch the first bitcoin futures contracts in December 2017.
Enthusiasm for the original crypto cooled in 2018, with BTC prices dropping below $4,000.
2020 – 2024
The next notable bitcoin boom occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. This time, BTC’s rise was partly driven by government shutdowns of sports, casinos, and other leisure and entertainment options and multiple rounds of government stimulus checks that left many Americans with extra disposable income.
But rising interest rates cooled investor enthusiasm in 2022, with a flight away from riskier assets like cryptocurrency.
Falling crypto prices in 2022 exposed overleverage among crypto lenders, hedge funds and exchanges. A string of crypto industry layoffs and bankruptcies weighed on bitcoin prices in 2022.
But it wasn’t too long before the original crypto began to rebound. Bitcoin’s rally resumed in 2023 and continues to climb.
On March 14, 2024, bitcoin reached an all-time intraday high of $73,750.07.
How to buy bitcoin online
Binance, Coinbase and Kraken are popular cryptocurrency exchanges for buying BTC.
You need a digital wallet to store your crypto. Private keys lock these wallets. Only people with the keys can use them to trade or store crypto.
Some bitcoin wallets are hardware wallets that look like USB drives. Others are software wallets that use apps on smartphones or other devices to store BTC.
Wallets are also divided into hot and cold options. Hot wallets are connected to the internet, which makes them more convenient but less safe. Cold wallets aren’t connected to the internet, offering more security but less convenience.
Read more: How to buy bitcoin
Bitcoin ETFs
Bitcoin exchange-traded funds offer a way to speculate on bitcoin prices without buying bitcoin directly.
In January 2024, the Securities and Exchange Commission approved several bitcoin spot ETFs. They trade on exchanges like stocks and hold actual bitcoin.
These ETFs signal the increasing acceptance of crypto in the financial world.
Frequently asked questions (FAQs)
Bitcoin’s ticker symbol is BTC. Traders use tickers to distinguish one cryptocurrency from another.
One BTC represents one bitcoin, which is currently valued at $68,235.83. While global central banks often increase the supply of fiat currencies like the U.S. dollar, the supply of bitcoin is capped at 21 million BTC.
