Bitcoin turns 18: Has the original rebel grown up? — SkimNews
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- Mt. Gox stopped trading and went offline in February 2014 after losing around 850,000 BTC, including customers' funds, a collapse that made it an early poster child for "not your keys, not your coins."
- Bitcoin climbed from below $1,000 at the start of 2017 to almost $20,000 by December as the ICO boom fueled speculation, while the August 2017 block size war hard fork in the same year created Bitcoin Cash.
- Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase's CEO, called Bitcoin "a fraud" in September 2017 and said he would fire any employee trading it, later shifting to allowing clients to buy the asset.
- China banned ICOs in September 2017 and later announced a sweeping ban on cryptocurrency transactions and mining in September 2021, after which Bitcoin's price took a hit.
- SEC approved the first U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs in January 2024, giving investors a regulated route to BTC exposure without managing wallets or private keys; Bitcoin broke $100,000 for the first time by year's end and set an all-time high above $126,000 in October 2025, while the GENIUS Act set a federal stablecoin framework and Europe's MiCA harmonized regional rules.
- Binance suffered a $6.3 billion hack this week, the largest crypto exchange hack on record, renewing fears about the security of centralized exchanges and the stability of crypto infrastructure.
- Bitcoin collected just 0.67% of total miner revenue from transaction fees in the 90 days to Oct. 4, below 5% for most of its history, leaving a widening gap as block rewards diminish with each halving; a proposed BIP-360 upgrade targets quantum vulnerabilities.
Why it matters: Bitcoin's $126,000 record, SEC-approved spot ETFs and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink's talk of putting stocks and bonds on-chain confirm a mainstream product. Miners, though, drew just 0.67% of revenue from fees in the 90 days to Oct. 4, leaving network security reliant on a subsidy that trends to zero as a $6.3 billion Binance hack renews fears over centralized exchanges.
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