Bitcoin Market Cap Hit $1 Billion Nine Years Ago

The market cap of Bitcoin reached $1 billion for the first time on March 28, 2013.

The world’s first cryptocurrency was trading at just $92 back then. The price rally was linked to the Cyprus banking crisis.

Notably, the event was covered by none other than Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. Before helping to launch the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency, he would write articles for Bitcoin Magazine, one of the first cryptocurrency-related publications.

Mt. Gox, which went out of business due to a crippling hacking incident that took place in February 2014, was still the dominant cryptocurrency trading platform back in the day.

Back then, Bitcoin was yet to become a mainstream asset despite growing adoption. During its first years, the cryptocurrency’s reputation was tainted by drug dealing and other nefarious activities.

 As reported by U.Today, Bitcoin surpassed the $1 trillion mark for the first time last February. This came shortly after Tesla, the world’s largest e-car maker, announced its $1.5 billion investment in the flagship cryptocurrency. In spite of various predictions about how the purchase would kickstart growing corporate adoption, other S&P 500 companies did not follow suit.

The market capitalization of Bitcoin is currently sitting at $902 billion, according to CoinMarketCap data. The price of the top cryptocurrency has rallied roughly 15.58% over the past week, currently trading at $47,649 on major spot exchanges.

If Bitcoin were a company, it would be the seventh-biggest company in the world (behind only Tesla, Amazon, Alphabet, Saudi Aramco, Microsoft and Apple).

Despite hitting impressive milestones, Bitcoin still has a lot of catching up to do in order to match the market cap of gold, which currently stands at roughly $12.2 trillion. For comparison, the total value of the S&P 500 index stands at $40.15 trillion.