For two years following the publishing of the now-famous Bitcoin whitepaper in October 2008, the person or people called Satoshi Nakamoto (presumed to be a pseudonym) who created the cryptocurrency corresponded regularly with the growing community, explaining the concepts behind a decentralized global digital currency.

What Happened: The last-known message from Nakamoto was sent on Jan. 10, 2011.

This message was an email to Bitcoin developer Mike Hearn and gave no indication that Nakamoto was about to make an abrupt exit.

Nakamoto stated in the email: “I must admit, this project was 2 years of development before release, and I could only spend so much time on each of the many issues. I was concerned about whether the bandwidth and storage sizes would be practical even with ECDSA. RSA's huge keys were out of the question. When I presented it, I was surprised nobody else was concerned about size, though I was also surprised how many issues they argued, and more surprised that every single one was something I had thought of and solved.”

Why It Matters: In 2023, Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) remained the world’s most popular cryptocurrency. As people in the crypto community wonder when this chilly crypto winter will end, they are speculating about the price of BTC, with #bitcoinprice trending on Twitter.

Bloomberg Markets' John Erlichman pointed out that Bitcoin has grown more than 122,000% in the past 10 years.

Some increases in the past decade:
Uber's revenue: +152,281%
Bitcoin price: +122,825%
Tesla vehicle sales: +50,315%
Amazon's cloud business: +3,738%
MCU box office: +642%
Netflix subscribers: +509%
Apple's dividends: +489%
U.S. money supply: +103%

Here are the charts…

— Jon Erlichman (@JonErlichman) December 30, 2022

Erlichman tweeted: “0 years ago, Bitcoin was less than $15. After falling 75% from its all-time high…it’s still up 122,000% in the past decade.”

He showed  Bitcoin growth surpassed Uber Technologies (NYSE:UBER), Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) and the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), a subisdiary of Walt Disney Co (NYSE:DIS).

@ChartsBTC called predicting Bitcoin price “a fool's errand,” but went on to show how if history was our guide, the halvening in 2023 could bring Bitcoin to a high of $250,000.

Billionaire investor and Bitcoin enthusiast Tim Draper had been making correct predictions about Bitcoin prices for 10 years. In 2018, he said Bitcoin would hit $250,000 by end of 2022 to the first quarter of 2023. He adjusted the timing just slightly in December, saying BTC will reach the $250,000 mark by end of 2023.

When asked about the built-in scarcity of Bitcoin, with a maximum of 21 million to be issued, Nakamoto explained:

“Educated guess, and the maths work out to round numbers. I wanted something that would be not too low if it was very popular and not too high if it wasn't.”

What's Next: It remained to be seen whether the limit on BTC will stifle its growth as a global currency — and whether the secret creator or creators of Bitcoin will ever pop up again to give advice and explanation to its growing community.

If they do wish to share some insights, Benzinga would be happy to speak to them, and the whole community will listen with anticipation.

Nakamoto made his own oblique prediction concerning Bitcoin’s growth, which doesn’t seem to account for the reality of its global adoption, but perhaps had some wisdom for the crypto pundits of today.

“Whatever the current capacity of the software is, it automatically grows at the rate of Moore's Law, about 60% per year,” Nakamoto stated.

Though Bitcoin may still be in its infancy, it seems to have exceeded its creator’s expectations.

Cover image by mhouge from Pixabay