If you had purchased bitcoin at the market close on Dec. 10, you would’ve paid $92,020.95. As of the market close one week later, on Dec. 17, it was worth $86,143.76. So your investment would’ve declined by $5,877.19, or about 6.4%.
Does this mean that bitcoin is a bad investment? Or that it’s too late to get in on the big gains? That may not be the case. But cryptocurrency is not an investment for the faint of heart. Let’s take a look at the history of bitcoin and its historical performance as an investment.
Bitcoin launched in 2009, making it older than many people realize. By 2011, bitcoin first traded at over $1. Since then, bitcoin has seen plenty of volatility — soaring to new heights and then falling back down to Earth.
In 2021, the Securities and Exchange Commission approved the first bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF). And in 2025, there has been plenty of news surrounding bitcoin, with President Donald Trump signing a executive order to establish a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.
Looking at the fact that bitcoin traded at $1 in 2011 and is now trading at nearly $100,000, one might conclude that bitcoin as an investment has been an incredible success. But it has been nothing if not volatile. The ups and downs of cryptocurrency have made and lost fortunes in very short periods of time, although, obviously, the trajectory has been sharply up.
If you look at historical bitcoin prices, you’ll see gains and losses alternating. For example, in November 2025, bitcoin traded over $111,000 and as low as about $80,000.
When you look over the long term, though, bitcoin’s upward trajectory becomes much clearer. Over the past five years, bitcoin is up 273.63% as of Dec. 18.
Bitcoin is an interesting investment in several ways, its meteoric rise in value being just one of them. It’s an investment, but it’s also a currency, although it’s not tied to any country. It is secure, which makes it safe, but it is also decentralized, which makes it vulnerable to exploitation.
No one knows how high bitcoin can go, or whether it will come crashing down. All we know is what we’ve seen, which has been a sharp, albeit bumpy, path upward.
