Bitcoin price today: BTC is trading at $61,340.31

What is the price of bitcoin today?

The price of bitcoin, or 1 BTC, traded at $61,340.31, as of 8 a.m. ET. The highest intraday price that the original crypto reached 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

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 $24,930.30 on Sep. 11, 2023. The original crypto is up by 109% 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 is known for its blockchain network and decentralized ledger that tracks transactions. The crypto has been used throughout the financial industry. Its network allows users to make transactions without a major bank or government intermediary.

Transactions are recorded on the blockchain and visible to everyone. Miners maintain the blockchain by solving complex math problems to validate transactions. This creates new blocks on the blockchain. Miners receive BTC payments for their work.

Bitcoin became a proof-of-concept mechanism that led to thousands of imitators. Since its launch, thousands of cryptos have come onto the scene.

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 halving dates

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?

Because bitcoin halvings reduce the supply of new BTC, they would theoretically be good for bitcoin prices.

But a halving doesn’t directly impact the price of bitcoin. So it’s not a guaranteed bullish catalyst. Historically, bitcoin prices have reached a cyclical bottom roughly a year before a halving occurs and have risen for more than a year after a halving.

Bitcoin price history

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

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

Investors can use bitcoin exchange-traded funds to speculate without investing directly in BTC.

The Securities and Exchange Commission approved these ETFs in January 2024. They hold bitcoin, not futures contracts, and trade on U.S. exchanges.

Many interpreted this approval as a significant validation of the cryptocurrency.

Frequently asked questions (FAQs)