At the time of writing, Bitcoin is $26,575. But as we all probably know Bitcoin has not always been at this price or even close to it (maybe I shouldn’t have added “probably” there because we all know, right? Right?). There was even a time when Bitcoin was less than a dollar and some guy named Laszlo Hanyecz had to pay 10,000 Bitcoins for a pizza. But we all already know the story, right?

Bitcoin being less than a dollar was way back in the first few years of its creation. The Bitcoin Whitepaper was published on the 31st of October, 2008 and the network/cryptocurrency was launched on the 3rd of January, 2009. Many people think that knowing about Bitcoin around this time would have really changed their lives and made them billionaires by now. But that is not true.

Why Knowing About it then Wouldn’t Have Helped You

I Knew About it Back Then in 2009

That is right, the author of this post knew about Bitcoin in 2009 and I’m still a pleb or a minnow or whatever it is they call church rats these days in crypto.

Back then, Java phones were new in Nigeria where I grew up, and most African countries. I and my young friends shared a Java phone and being knowledge-hungry curious kids we always found ourselves googling about any and everything.

I don’t remember in what month, but I know we stumbled on an article about some internet money called Bitcoin. We learned it could be used to purchase things internationally without using a bank but strictly anonymously from buyer to seller.

We talked about the entire concept and all the most significant thing finding out did for us was bringing us to the conclusion that anytime we want to buy something internationally in the future we would consider using Bitcoin so that all the protocol that comes with using banks wouldn’t affect us. And that was all!

Why it Wouldn’t Have Helped You Any More than it Helped Us

1. There Was No Way to Know About Bitcoin’s Ability to Appreciate:

Realize that the concept of cryptocurrencies was new back then and there wasn’t even any proper exchange for Bitcoin until 2010 when Mt. Gox was founded. Learning about some internet money at that time mainly had to do with learning that it is a means of payment and nothing more.

You never left with any sort of knowledge that it was something you could invest in for returns. And Bitcoin getting into your hands because you sold something (like the Pizza seller) or rendered a service (like Hal Finney or Laszlo Hanyecz) was almost impossible because agreeing to be paid in Bitcoin would have been difficult for you so would keeping it for long enough to really matter.

2. The Bitcoin Whitepaper Never Promised You or Hinted at Any Future Treasures or Even Crumbs:

Even the Bitcoin Whitepaper was titled: Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System and on reading it you would only find why it was created, its importance, the logic behind it, and how it is to be mined, and how proof-of-work is supposed to work.

There was absolutely nothing saying that this money stood a chance of being worth more than anything in the future aside from being just a means of payment like fiat. And you’ve had fiat all your life, it never appreciated but depreciated.

So what was to make you think you had a chance here?

3. It Was Too Early to Trust it Long Term:

Say somehow you had a reason to get Bitcoin back then, chances are you would not have been able to hold on to it for too long. That is because it was new and wasn’t backed by so many things or conventionally trusted institutions.

You would have most likely sold or not taken your wallet access keys and information seriously. Selling would have most likely occurred in 2011 when 1 Bitcoin got to $0.30, or when it got to $31.50 in June of the same year. If you didn’t sell then you would have sold somewhere along the road to the next all-time high of $1,163 in 2013.

If you escaped that you were sure to sell some on the way to the big boom of 2017 or be left with only very little.

4. Mt. Gox Hack:

Even if you didn’t sell, there is a solid 70% chance that you would have lost it all in the Mt. Gox hack. Because by the time Mt. Gox closed in 2014, it was, according to Wikipedia, handling over 70% of Bitcoin transactions worldwide!

That is your 70% chance. And just two years later came the Bitfinex hack where 119,756 Bitcoins were lost. This was the second largest loss of Bitcoins to a hack.

Conclusion

One can easily ask “How about all the old Hodlers who still kept their crypto through all these?” The reply is simply that the percentage is too small to matter and many of the old bags sold and lost but we’re able to still purchase somewhere along the line.

But the chances of investing in Bitcoin back in 2009 or so were very slim. And even if you got it somehow, keeping a substantial amount of it up till 2017 or 2021 when most people started saying “We wish we knew about it back in 2009” was almost nonexistent.

It was mostly from 2017 that people wished they had known about it back then. That is because 2017 was when its chances of making you a millionaire if you had a big old bag were higher, but the fact remains that getting in or keeping a substantial bag up until then was something only about 1% of people would have managed.

[Picture by Bryce Durbin for TechCrunch]