A History of Major Bitcoin Crashes

This article was written by Usman Ahmed at Investoo Group, which provides expert products for the financial trading industry.


Bitcoin is definitely the most famous cryptocurrency created and held online. Satoshi Nakamoto – a gifted programmer- is considered to be the main inventor of Bitcoin.

Difference between Bitcoins & Paper Currencies

The main distinction between Bitcoin trading and paper currencies is that Bitcoin can be created (mined) with only a limited quantity. Whereas, paper currencies are usually printed by central banks in large quantity just to settle national debts and fiscal deficits etc. which consequently leads to widespread inflation and poverty.

Bitcoin History

Bitcoin saw many ups and downs during its brief history. In this article we will try to cover major Bitcoin crashes with the help of an infographic.

The history of Bitcoin dates back to January 3, 2009 when the blockchain was officially launched. On February 2011- for the first time in history, Bitcoin’s value achieved parity with American dollar. On June 19 2011, Bitcoin suffered a $3 nosedive within minutes, decreasing the price of cryptocurrency to less than $16 after Mt. Gox was hacked. A similar situation happened again on February 11, 2012 when the Bitcoin plunged by $2 to almost $4 after Paxum stopped accepting Bitcoin. Again on March 1 2012, Bitcoin fell sharply by $4.89 as 46000 Bitcoins were stolen in Linode hacking.

On August 17 2012, Bitcoin plunged $3 to less than $11 after Pirateat40 stopped accepting Bitcoin payments. Another crash happened on April 10 2013 when Bitcoin plunged $60 to just $122 as increased trading volume disrupted Mt. Gox servers. On August 30 2013, Bitcoin crashed $131 to $126 within minutes as Tradehill announced closure.  Similarly on December 5 2013, Bitcoin nosedived $300 to $840 as China banned financial institutions from using Bitcoin. The history of Bitcoin is full of such crashes. You can go through all such crashes in our infographic.

After so many hacking attempts and attacks on major Bitcoin exchanges, Bitcoin stakeholders have beefed up security of Bitcoin wallets due to which intensity of such incidents decreased noticeably lately.

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