Bitcoin didn't take the world by storm, so to say, when it came out in 2009, though it certainly did catch on just over a half-decade later. In the early days of the world's first cryptocurrency, people typically weren't buying to invest for the long run; rather, they were fascinated by the novelty of Bitcoin, most likely.

Even today, after nearly 11 straight years of non-stop operation, Bitcoin still isn't a true currency. Currencies, if you didn't know, are stores of value that most — in today's world, essentially all people widely agree upon the value of the dollar — people also consider to be valuable.

Let's Go Back in Time, Again, to the Earliest Days of Bitcoin

Bitcoin, of course, came out in early Jan. 2009. Satoshi Nakamoto and his real-life friends and colleagues who helped him develop the idea of Bitcoin and also laid down the groundwork for its predecessors traded the cryptocurrency around several times in 2009, though no goods or services were exchanged in return — it was nothing more than Monopoly money at that point.

On May 22, 2010, a Floridian named Laszio Hanyecz arranged a trade on the bitcointalk forum with a fellow forum user, an unnamed British man, agreed to act as a currency exchange of sorts. The Brit took Mr. Hanyecz's 10,000 bitcoin in exchange for buying two pizzas online from a Papa John's that was local to Laszio Hanyecz. The anonymous British user walked away with what's now worth roughly $93 million as of Tuesday, July 21, 2020, when one bitcoin is trading for roughly $9,385.

Should We Really Listen to the Wealthy's Criticisms of Bitcoin?

Peter Schiff, the founder, Chief Global Strategist, and Chief Executive Officer of Euro Pacific Capital Inc. Recently, the business mogul came out and criticized Bitcoin for not being widely used as a true currency. Rather, he asserts that it's often used by people who see Bitcoin as a short-term investment vehicle for generating profits as opposed to a long-term investment or even a currency, though some people certainly do use it as such — Schiff just thinks those people are in the super-minority.