SIX FIGURE BITCOIN

Bitcoin price milestones have been celebrated since the very early days. For so long as Bitcoin has had a market price, its community has toasted the latest all-time high (ATH) – even if in many cases it was to prove short-lived. While few were around to celebrate BTC hitting $10, there were plenty in attendance when it broke through $100 in 2013, and multiples more when it touched $1,000 in November of the same year.

In the 11 years that followed, Bitcoin waxed and waned as industry events and macro forces impacted its market price. Both the $1,000 and $100 price points were lost before being reclaimed, and while BTC comfortably escaped these levels eventually and moved much higher, the next major milestone – $100,000 – felt a long way off.

It was coming, bulls were sure, but getting to that dizzying height would call for the stars to align for Bitcoin. This meant a huge inflow of institutional capital, aided by better infrastructure and less onerous regulation that would allow innovation – and trading – to flourish.

Slowly but surely, these puzzle pieces were added, culminating in the approval of the first Bitcoin ETFs in January 2024. During the course of the year, approximately 3% of the entire Bitcoin supply was hoovered up by institutional investors, sending Bitcoin higher. $100K, once seen as little more than a dream, was fast becoming an inevitability.

During the course of the year, Standard Chartered’s analysts, who in 2023 had predicted $100K by the end of 2024, upgraded their targets, calling even $120K a conservative estimate given the “torrential inflows” into Bitcoin funds. Everyone, it seemed, was bullish.

The Six-Figure Club

On December 3, 2024, Bitcoin finally made its long-awaited breakthrough when it entered the six-figure club at block 873,052. For the first time, BTC was trading for over $100,000 a coin. The “$100K block” was mined by AntPool and contained around 1,300 ordinary transactions, with no encoded metadata from speculators attempting to immortalise the moment.

The #Bitcoin100K hashtag began trending as thousands of users posted screenshots of the price ticker and rocket emojis. Reddit’s r/Bitcoin forum overflowed with excitement, and hodler memes – including laser-eyed PFPs – made a comeback across profiles. The overall sentiment was a mix of euphoria and vindication, especially for early adopters who had held through prior boom and bust cycles.

Donald Trump took to his Truth Social platform to cheer Bitcoin’s breakthrough, writing: “CONGRATULATIONS BITCOINERS!!! $100,000!!! YOU’RE WELCOME!!! Together, we will Make America Great Again!”

Early adopters also took to social media to share stories of how far Bitcoin had come, and while some long-time holders elected to realise a little profit, the general consensus was to keep holding for even higher prices. Surveys by crypto platforms indicated that a majority of retail crypto buyers were not selling at $100K, setting new targets like $200K or $1M in the future. This entrenched hodl mentality helped limit the selling pressure at $100K.

Profound as this achievement was, what happened next was arguably equally impressive: rather than dumping in anticipation of the psychological price point being reached, Bitcoin pushed higher, and was soon trading between $101-104K.

It wasn’t the only Bitcoin benchmark that was rising either: by mid-December 2024, the network’s hash rate hit a new all-time high, soaring past 800 EH/s (exahashes per second), demonstrating that its security was rising in lockstep with its price.

While the $100K price point hit on December 4 was to be tested again in the weeks to come, Bitcoin had proven that it was comfortable with trading at that level. The next great milestone would be $1M.