Here’s how it stacks up against other tech giants

But first it's very fast-

Bitcoin continued its New Year's rally that began on December 30, when it neared $91,500. On Friday, January 3, it was running full steam ahead, briefly hitting $98,690.

That's a strong rally, with 24H trade volume falling to $35 billion, down from $56 billion at $1.94 trillion on December 30.

Bitcoin is based on a new design for computers on a decentralized peer-to-peer network called blockchain. Bitcoin “miners” create a new block every ten minutes with newly organized transactions and an updated block of all accounts (called addresses) on the chain. The electronic money platform generated its first block on January 3, 2009.

Now that Bitcoin is old enough to drive a car in the United States, see how Google, Amazon, and Facebook are turning the sweet sixteen.

BTC and Nasdaq leaders compared

Bitcoin traded at an average of $0.00099 on BitcoinTalkForum for handshake deals and payments on PayPal. A one dollar bag of bitcoins is worth $9.8 billion at today's BTC rate.

This is a 989,898,990,000,000% (989 trillion percent) increase in the value of BTC in 16 years. It is a rate of growth so surprising that traditional financial markets have only recently begun to understand that it is true.

Here's how three Nasdaq tech giants compare:

Google shares launched in 2004 with an initial public offering (IPO) at $85 per share. On January 3, 11 years later, they trade at $193. But in the year After the 2022 stock split, the company issued 20 shares to each existing investor at the time. So adjusted to $3,860, the ROI for Google stock is 4,541% over the 11 years since the IPO date.

In 1997, Amazon stock started at $18. It traded at $224 on January 3, after 28 years. But after the four-share split, IPO buyers with remaining shares own 240 for every one they bought in 1997.

So adjusted to $53,760, the ROI for Amazon stock from its IPO is 298,666%. Bitcoin could be given 11 more years of growth and still dwarf these gains in comparison.

That's really impressive because Amazon's IPO shares are some of the best-performing stock market investments in history.

Facebook stock in 2018 It launched in 2012 at $38. It traded at $604 on January 3rd. The company, now called Meta, has never issued a stock split.

So, the ROI for Facebook after 12 years is 1,589%.

16th birthday milestones for Bitcoin

At the age of 16, Google acquired London-based AI firm DeepMind Technologies in 2014.

Today, AI is one of the most important narratives in the crypto space next to Bitcoin. At the end of December, cryptocurrency tokens for AI agents posted 67% of the day for a 30-day window. Some have posted over 200% ROIs.

In 2010, Amazon closed the $545 million acquisition of Diaper.com and Sop.com in its sixteenth year.

Bitcoin is not a corporation and cannot make purchases, but today, many corporations have begun to acquire BTC. That currently includes Japan's Metaplanet and Virginia Microstrategy.

As Facebook turns sixteen in 2020, it turns meta to focus on virtual reality.

Today, several cryptocurrencies are emerging in the VR sector, such as Shiba Inu's Shibarium, Virtuals Protocol, Axie Infinity, and Decentraland.