Here’s how it’s stacking up against other tech giants

But very quickly first…

Bitcoin price has continued its New Year’s holiday rally that began on December 30 when the price hovered near $91,500. On Friday, January 3, it was full steam ahead, briefly touching $98,690.

That’s a sharp rally, with 24-hour trading volume falling to $35 billion on its $1.94 trillion market cap from $56 billion on Dec. 30. Meanwhile, the Nasdaq Composite fell 1.38%.

Bitcoin is based on a new design for computers in a decentralized peer-to-peer network called blockchain. Bitcoin “miners” create a new block every ten minutes that contains newly settled transactions and an updated record of all accounts (called addresses) on the chain. The electronic cash platform generated its first block on January 3, 2009.

Now that Bitcoin is old enough to drive a car if you’re a human living in the United States, here’s a look back at what Google, Amazon, and Facebook were like when they were sixteen.

Comparison of BTC and Nasdaq Leaders

Bitcoin was traded on the BitcoinTalkForum via cash-in and PayPal settlements for an average of $0.00099. A bag full of Bitcoin worth one dollar is then worth about $9.8 billion for the same amount of BTC at current prices.

That’s a 989,898,990,000,000% (989 trillion percent) increase in the value of BTC in 16 years. This is a rate of growth so surprising traditional financial markets have only recently begun to understand that it is even real.

Here’s how three Nasdaq tech giants compare:

Google stock debuted in an initial public offering (IPO) in 2004 at $85 per share. On January 3, some 11 years later, they are trading at $193. But after a stock split in 2022, the company issued 20 shares for every investor it had at the time. So, adjusted to $3,860, Google stock’s ROI over about 11 years from the IPO date is 4,541%.

Amazon stock debuted at $18 a share in 1997. On Jan. 3, it traded at $224, some 28 years later. But after four stock splits, IPO buyers with remaining shares have 240 for each they bought in 1997.

So adjusted to $53,760, the ROI on Amazon stock from its IPO is 298,666%. Bitcoin can give you an additional 11 years of growth and still absolutely dwarf those gains by comparison.

This is really remarkable because Amazon IPO shares are some of the best performing stock market investments in history.

Facebook stock launched at $38 per share in 2012. On January 3, it traded at $604. The company, now called Meta, has never split its stock.

So Facebook’s ROI after 12 years is 1,589%.

Bitcoin’s 16th Anniversary Milestones

At 16, Google acquired London-based AI company DeepMind Technologies in 2014.

Today, AI is one of the biggest narratives in the crypto space adjacent to Bitcoin. At the end of December, cryptocurrency tokens for AI agents posted 67% days for the 30-day window. Some posted over 200% ROI.

Amazon closed a $545 million acquisition of Diapers.com and Soap.com in 2010 in its sixteenth year.

Bitcoin is not a corporation and cannot make acquisitions, but nowadays, various corporations are starting to acquire BTC. This currently includes Japan’s Metaplanet and Virginia’s MicroStrategy.

Facebook changed its name to Meta to focus on virtual reality in 2020 when it turned sixteen.

Today, several cryptocurrencies are being developed in the VR sector, including Shibarium, Virtuals Protocol, Axie Infinity, and Shiba Inu’s Decentraland.

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