Whether we are talking about crypto, stocks or commodities, everything has to start somewhere. Today we will find out what the first cryptocurrency exchange was, when and how it was created!
When you think of the first cryptocurrency exchange, your mind probably jumps to Mt. Gox, however it was none other than the now defunct Bitcoinmarket.com. The first idea of the site was proposed on the Bitcointalk forum.
Bitcointalk is the oldest bitcoin forum out there, and it is here that Satoshi Nakamoto used to post (you can still find his old posts). The member “dwdollar” made his first post about the exchange he was creating on January 15 2010; which you can find in the screenshot below along with a link to the forum. Two months later, on March 17, 2010 Bitcoinmarket, the first cryptocurrency exchange went live.
Prior to dwdollar’s exchange there was no real consensus regarding the value of BTC. However when Bitcoinmarket first went live Bitcoin was priced around $0.003. Back then you would need 333 Bitcoins to buy a single dollar, while as of today you need$27,653.59 to buy a single Bitcoin!
The first ever method of exchanging USD for BTC was Paypal. However, by the summer of the year 2011, PayPal fell out of favor due to the increasing number of scammers, and many traders looked to buy Bitcoins elsewhere. At around the same time, among other exchanges, the one that was to monopolize most of the Bitcoins transactions and also fall prey to the largest theft in Bitcoin’s history was launched. It’s name was none other than Mt.Gox.
First post from dwdollar about Bitcoinmarker.com
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=20.0
The largest exchange of the early days
Mt.Gox used to have a monopoly on Bitcoin’s trading volume accounting for 70% to 80% of its total trading volume at its peak. Sadly in 2014, bad times followed for the crypto community as it was discovered that Mt.Gox had been continuously hacked for years starting in late 2011.
A hacker figured out how to gain access to exchange wallets and has been stealing funds in 90% of the cases as soon as they appeared on the exchange.
Ultimately it was reported that a staggering 850,000 BTC had been stolen, accumulating in 7% of the total supply of Bitcoin. What is even worse is that the CEO knew about this theft for 8 months before going public.
The exchange filed for bankruptcy while its CEO spent a year in jail in Japan.
We will now jump on to the largest exchange operating today.
The largest exchange today
The largest exchange by reported volume according to CoinMarketCap is none other than Binance. The company was launched in China in July 2017 by Changpeng Zhao.
The company was able to grow very quickly due to how much it values its customer. The first example of this came shortly after Binance was launched when the Chinese government decided to shut down all exchanges.
The government demanded that all ICO exchanges return the funds to the investors. Binance went beyond that and actually returned the funds of the investors at their original investment rate.
A second example can be found when the company was hacked off $40 million in May 2019. Zhao was transparent about the incident and reimbursed its customers from the company’s pockets.
Finally, let's have a look at how we started!
Cryptohopper’s first
We also have a history, which starts in September 2017 with our first Cryptohopper (which can be seen below) and our first exchange Poloniex. As time passed by, our platform grew and by March 2020 we are now offering 18 exchanges with many more on the way. Connect to your favorite exchange today and start trading with Cryptohopper!
