What is the price of bitcoin today?
Bitcoin, or 1 BTC, traded at $65,403.50 as of 8 a.m. ET. The highest intraday price the crypto reached 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 $26,817.89 on Oct. 15, 2023. The original crypto is up by 136% 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 $1.30 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?
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 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
The reward miners receive for validating new blocks is reduced by half every 210,000 blocks. It’s a process known as halving.
This built-in pay cut limits bitcoin’s supply and supports its price.
Does bitcoin halving increase BTC’s price?
Slowing the rate at which miners draw bitcoin should drive prices higher. But there’s no guarantee it will play out that way in the markets.
Historically, BTC prices have followed certain cycles around halving events. Prices have typically bottomed about a year before a halving. Then they rise for more than a year after a halving. But these patterns aren’t set in stone.
Bitcoin price history
2010 – 2019
The earliest bitcoin exchanges launched in 2010. The crypto cleared the $1 threshold in 2011.
From there, BTC prices shot up. They reached $1,000 in late 2013 and kept growing.
By November 2017, prices had cleared $10,000. They doubled to over $20,000 a month later. CME Group’s decision to start offering bitcoin futures contracts in December 2017 was likely a factor.
Enthusiasm for the crypto declined in 2018. BTC prices dipped under $4,000 that year.
2020 – 2024
The COVID-19 pandemic sparked another major boom in 2020. Markets likely benefited from government stimulus money pouring into the economy while interest rates remained low.
As interest rates rose in 2022, many investors pivoted away from risky assets like crypto.
Falling crypto prices revealed overextended institutions. The industry was hit by a string of layoffs amid bitcoin’s decline.
But 2023 saw yet another price rally. On March 14, 2024, bitcoin set a new intraday high of $73,750.07.
How to buy bitcoin online
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.
Since bitcoin exchanges launched in 2010, BTC’s lowest recorded price was $0.04865 on July 14, 2010, according to CoinMarketCap. That said, bitcoin reportedly traded on online forums for just $0.00099 per BTC in 2009.
