Bitcoin: after 10 wild years, what next for cryptocurrencies?

From next to no value in 2009, it rose to $20,000 and crashed back to $3,000 within a decade

Two years after its inception, 10,000 bitcoin was just about enough to buy a couple of takeaway pizzas. Today those bitcoin would be worth nearly $38m (30m). That is a huge increase, but just a fraction of their $180m value only 13 months ago, because since its creation a decade ago this week, the digital currency has been at the centre of one of the biggest economic bubbles in history.

Bitcoin has had a wild ride since its birth on 3 January 2009. Created as a digital currency to sidestep the traditional finance industry using encrypted code, it took until May 2010 for the first reported purchase using bitcoin to take place: those two large Papa John's pizzas worth $30 for 10,000 bitcoins.