Bitcoin Looks Nothing Like It Did When Satoshi Disappeared 15 Years Ago

• Bitcoin’s founderless design enabled it to evolve from a niche experiment into a credibly decentralized, institutionally held asset.
• Corporate treasuries and spot ETFs accelerated Bitcoin’s integration into traditional financial markets without changing its core rules.
• As of December 2025, there are more than 80 digital asset treasuries in the market.

Fifteen years ago on this date, Satoshi Nakamoto made his last public post on the Bitcointalk forum, after which he quietly left a project that was still a little-known peer-to-peer money experiment at the time.

​At the time, Bitcoin (BTC) was worth only a few cents, mining was done on personal computers, and its future was very uncertain. Back then, Bitcoin was trading between $0.08 and $0.30.

On Friday, Bitcoin’s price was trading at around $90,070, up 145.6 million percent since its inception. On Stocktwits, the retail sentiment rose from ‘neutral’ to ‘bullish’ over the past day with ‘low’ levels of chatter. 

Fifteen years later, Bitcoin is now a well-known institutional asset held on corporate balance sheets, traded through regulated ETFs, referenced by central banks, and debated in boardrooms.

​Community Jumped In To Save Bitcoin

Adam Back, a British cryptographer, was one of the most important figures to emerge from this period. He invented Hashcash, which became the basis for Bitcoin's proof-of-work system and was mentioned by Satoshi in the original white paper.

After Nakamoto left, developers like Gavin Andresen took on leadership roles in coordinating code changes and network upgrades. Andresen helped organize the first Bitcoin Improvement Proposals and oversaw the rollout of the Bitcoin 0.8 software updates, making the network more stable and easier to use.

Bitcoin continued to grow in a decentralized fashion, with contributors stepping in to keep the protocol up to date. This model reduced the risk of any one person gaining excessive power over time and strengthened Bitcoin's decentralized nature.

In "What is Money?" from 2020, Strategy’s (MSTR) executive chairman Michael Saylor called Bitcoin "a fixed rule set that no one can change or manipulate." Later that year, at the BTC Prague keynote, Saylor said the same thing about governance more directly: "You don't change bitcoin... individuals cannot change it."

‘Too Many DATs’ Is Now A Thing

Saylor turned Bitcoin's decentralized design into a business plan in 2020, treating it as a long-term treasury reserve rather than a speculative trade. Strategy started turning extra cash into Bitcoin, saying it was a way to protect against currency debasement and an efficient approach to deal with uncertainty in the economy as a whole. The method led to the creation of what we know today as digital asset treasuries (DATs).

As of December 2025, there are more than 80 DATs in the market, including Elon Musk's Tesla (TSLA), Tom Lee’s BitMine Immersion Technologies (BMNR), and Twenty One Capital (XXI). In fact, according to Lee, there may be ‘too many DATs’ in the market now.

Crypto exchanges like Gemini (GEMI) and Coinbase (COIN) are now publicly listed companies on the Nasdaq. Circle (CRCL) – issuer of the second-largest stablecoin in the market, USD Coin (USDC) – also made its public market debut earlier this year.

Institutional Impact May Have Broken Bitcoin’s 4-Year Cycle

Custody solutions also improved, derivatives markets expanded, and Bitcoin trading was integrated into traditional financial systems. The approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs in July 2024 allowed easier investor access through brokerage accounts, reducing management complexities. As of Friday, Bitcoin spot ETFs had recorded cumulative net inflows of $57.85 billion and $3.80 billion in total value traded, according to SoSoValue.

The overlap between institutional interest and the digital asset market has reached a point where many, like Lee and Ark Invest’s Cathie Wood, have said the Bitcoin four-year cycle may no longer hold.

Fifteen years later, what started as an experiment by a small group of cryptographers and developers has slowly become part of the global financial landscape, potentially at odds with the original ethos behind its creation.

Read also: PayPal Stock Falls After Baird Cuts Rating Despite YouTube Integration With PYUSD

For updates and corrections, email newsroom[at]stocktwits[dot]com.

Share

·

Add us on