Ever wonder how different your life would be if you'd been able to invest in Bitcoin back in the day?
It's not worth thinking about, as it would probably make you sad. But for anyone who is curious, or wants to mourn the opportunity they had to be a millionaire, let's look at how rich you could've been.
Bitcoin officially launched back on 9 January 2009 and at the time was a pretty niche thing to be involved in.
The first sale made through Bitcoin occurred a year later, with one man exchanging 1000BTC for two pizzas at a Papa Johns in Florida on 22 May 2010.
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However the Bitcoin landscape has rapidly changed in the years since as 15 years on and owning 1000BTC would make you very wealthy today.
How much money would you have if you'd invested $1 in Bitcoin back in 2009?
However not everyone had a spare $100 or $1000 to be chucking into a cryptocurrency scheme back in the day, so what about if you'd invested a single dollar (£0.75)?
Spoiler alert, you'd still be very rich.
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According to BiTBO, the US dollars to Bitcoin exchange rate wasn't an official thing back in 2009, however the few transactions which did take place would suggest a single Bitcoin was worth $0.00099.
Which means with a single dollar you could've secured 1000BTC, according to the Bitcoin calculator.
Fast forward over 15 years and that single dollar would've stretched very far, with Coinbase putting the current exchange rate for a single Bitcoin at $114,675.75 (£86,046.19) as of 13 October 2025.
Times that by the 1000BTC you banked 16 years ago and the total comes out at a grand total of 114717965. Or $114.72 million (£85.32 million).
Which is a hell of a lot of money.
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The key to getting disgustingly rich off Bitcoin was of course making sure you got in there early, as the price of Bitcoin a few years later in 2015 averaged $287.46.
If this reality has left you feeling a little sad then remember, it could always be worse.
You could be the man whose hard drive containing the equivalent of £690 million ended up in landfill near Newport in Wales.
Bitcoin is also not immune to the whims of the markets either, with last week seeing the cryptocurrency crash and burn over fears of a trade war between Donald Trump imposed 100 percent tariffs on fellow superpower China (via Yahoo).
Brenna Cooper