Bitcoin Booms Globally, But Goes Bust In India?

It is curious that just when cryptocurrencies are seeing their greatest run on the global stage and blockchain looks set to deliver in the post-Covid world, the Indian government is looking to ban Bitcoin and other digital currencies like it

- Sunil Rajguru

These have been heady days for Bitcoin. Created in 2008 and launched in 2009, a developer paid 10,000 Bitcoins for two Papa John’s pizzas in 2010. (Today those Bitcoins would be worth cool half a billion dollars, talk about inflation!) Non-profit organization electronic Frontier Foundation started accepting Bitcoin payments in 2011. In 2012, TV serial the Good Wife saw an episode titled: Bitcoin for Dummies.

In 2013, a us government agency first seized Bitcoin in a drug case. In 2014, casinos and online games started accepting Bitcoins and in 2015, Coinbase raised $75 million. The Japanese government recognized cryptocurrency in 2016 and in 2017 it got the symbol. 2018 saw the cryptocurrency bubble while the number of Bitcoin ATMs crossed 5000 in 2019.

2020 was the Covid Year and saw a Great Reset. Stalwarts stumbled and newbies thrived. Rapid digitization and collaboration became running themes. So what would happen to Bitcoin? Would it go boom or bust? surely it wouldn’t stay the same! In 2020 from February to March it crashed from a near 10K to an almost sub-5K. Many thought it was finished, but since then its rise has simply been stunning.