CoinCodex Historical data shows that in early October 2016, the trading price of Bitcoin was around just over $600. A broader historical view of Bitcoin prices indicates that BTC in early 2016 it was around $430, after which it entered a period of upward movement and ultimately approached $20,000 by the end of 2017.

Calculated based on the latest price of $84,537 on October 3rd as per CoinCodex, if one had bought $1,000 worth of Bitcoin at $612.13 at that time, its current value would be approximately $138,100, not including any handling fees or taxes.

This means that the increase over a period of ten years is approximately 13,700%.

Bitcoin has grown from an asset worth a few hundred dollars to a market with a value of trillions of dollars.

Price increases are just part of the story.

In 2016, Bitcoin was still primarily traded through professional cryptocurrency exchanges and had not yet made its way into traditional investment portfolios. Spot Bitcoin ETF in the United States did not exist at that time, and the development of institutional custody was far less mature than it is now. The practice of companies including Bitcoin in their balance sheets had not yet become a mainstream strategy.

According to CoinCodex data, the current market value of Bitcoin is approximately 1.7 trillion US dollars, with the latest daily trading volume exceeding 80 billion US dollars.

This institutionalized shift is particularly evident in the capital flow of Bitcoin ETF. Nowadays, ETF provides investors with a regulated brokerage channel to allocate BTC, without the need to hold it directly through cryptocurrency exchanges.

These past ten years have certainly not been a period of continuous upward growth in a straight line.

In retrospect, such returns may seem simple, but to hold Bitcoin for ten years, one must endure several major crashes.

CoinCodex data shows that BTC rose by 1,357% in 2017, followed by a decline of over 73% in 2018. It then rose by more than 300% in 2020, increased by another 59.6% in 2021, and then fell by 64.2% in 2022.

This volatility means that the long-term returns of Bitcoin should not be understood as a stable annual compound interest path.

More recently, institutional demand has become an even more important factor in price formation. An explanatory article by Coinpaper regarding the demand for ETF points out that even with a large influx of funds, it cannot be guaranteed that BTC will definitely rise on any given day, because ETF buyers are just a part of the global market; the entire market also includes exchanges, derivatives, over-the-counter trading desks, and long-term holders.