15 Years Later: How Bitcoin Defied Skeptics and Conquered Mainstream Finance

From underground experiment to trillion-dollar asset—Bitcoin's wild ride isn't slowing down.

The Code That Shook the World

A pseudonymous coder's white paper in 2008 ignited a financial revolution. Now, 15 years later, Wall Street funds fight for ETF approvals while legacy banks scramble to stay relevant.

Volatility? What Volatility?

Early crashes (remember Mt. Gox?) gave way to institutional adoption—proving the naysayers wrong. Even Goldman Sachs finally admitted it wasn't 'just for drug dealers.'

The Ultimate Hedge

While fiat currencies debase, Bitcoin's hard cap of 21 million coins makes it the anti-inflation play. Sorry, central bankers—your money printers meet their match.

The Punchline?

Traditional finance still hates it... while quietly accumulating. The ultimate hypocrisy—but we'll take the growth anyway.

It worked. Slashdot featured teppy’s submission on its front page on July 11, 2010 — widely regarded as the first instance of a major media platform publicizing Bitcoin (it’s even in Slashdot’s Wiki entry). Bitcoins were trading for about $0.05 at the time.

“How’s this for a disruptive technology? Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer, network-based digital currency with no central bank, and no transaction fees. Using a proof-of-work concept, nodes burn CPU cycles searching for bundles of coins, broadcasting their findings to the network.” 

“Analysis of energy usage indicates that the market value of Bitcoins is already above the value of the energy needed to generate them, indicating healthy demand. The community is hopeful the currency will remain outside the reach of any government.”

Bitcoin’s price began its first major bull run about three months following the Slashdot post, in October 2010, and would reach dollar parity by February 2011. 

Slashdot also celebrated that milestone with another front-page feature, which when played back-to-back showed just how important Bitcoin’s first few fans really were.

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