Cryptocurrency Market Hits $2Trillion

The cryptocurrency market has grown exponentially in 2021 and is now worth a staggering $2.0 trillion as it increasingly attracts interest from big names on Wall Street.

As digital currency exchange Coinbase prepares to list Tuesday in New York, AFP takes a look at a sector built from scratch just 12 years ago.

On October 31, 2008, in the wake of the financial crisis, one or more anonymous people, hidden behind the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, published the founding white paper of bitcoin.

The goal was to create a means of payment, the security of which would not be overseen by a central bank or financial organisations, but instead regulated by software with rules almost impossible to alter. 

While anybody can “mine” for new bitcoins, to do so requires giant data centres — leading to platforms such as Coinbase providing a way of trading in cryptocurrencies.

Banks and payment services such as Paypal allow transactions in certain digital currencies.

Almost 18.7 million bitcoins have been created since the first block of 50 in early 2009.

A limit of 21 million bitcoins has been set by Nakamoto.