A SMALL DECLINE IN A YEAR

BITCOIN was heading towards a yearon-year loss yesterday, its 10th birthday, the first loss since last year’s bull market, when the original and biggest digital coin muscled its way to worldwide attention with months of frenzied buying. By 1pm, bitcoin was trading at $6 263 (R91 641) on the BitStamp exchange, leaving investors who had bought it on Halloween 2017 facing yearly losses of nearly 3 percent. A year ago, bitcoin closed at $6 443.22 as it tore towards a record high of near $20 000, hit in December. That run, fuelled by frenzied buying by retail investors from South Korea to the US, pushed bitcoin to calendar-year gains of more than 1 300 percent. Ten years ago, Satoshi Nakamoto, bitcoin’s stillunidentified founder, released a white paper detailing the need for an online currency that could be used for payments without the involvement of a third party, such as a bank.