On 29 May 2011 the New York Times wrote their first piece about Bitcoin. They state "But this abstract gold may not survive what looks like a bubble." Bitcoin was priced at $8.60.

Having a look back through history is always fun, and in this instance back to possibly the first ever article written about Bitcoin by the New York Times.

The date was 29 May 2011 and Bitcoin was priced at $8.60.

What was happening at this point in time?

• This was still the early days of Bitcoin, it had only been declared dead literally a couple of times (source: https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin-obituaries/).
• It had been only 1 year and 7 days since the infamous 10,000BTC pizza.
• Mt Gox hadn't yet been breached.

The article:

We must remember at this time that the idea of cryptocurrencies was very new, so they had to spend half of the article trying to explain what Bitcoin was, and for this they actually don't do a bad job at all, even including potential benefits and comparisons with fiat such as "The concept of the Bitcoin is no less real than regular paper money or coins".

A few key callouts:

• "But there aren’t many businesses that accept Bitcoins. So it seems likely that enthusiasts and speculators are hoarding them without regard to the value they really represent." - This is still largely the case. Bitcoin was intended for digital transactions, but it has been more of a speculative bet / store of value since.
• "A bubble that bursts when the abstract intellectual appeal fades would probably doom the otherwise creative idea." - I guess that abstract intellectual appeal never faded quite enough for it to be doomed.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/30/business/economy/30views.html

What happened with Bitcoin prices from here?

The New York Times wrote this article just as Bitcoin was on a strong upward trajectory for a few months:

• $9.57 in June
• $15.30 in July

We then saw a drop for the second half of 2011, finishing the year at around $3.00.

Source: https://www.in2013dollars.com/bitcoin-price-in-2011

What did the New York Times write next?

The next article I could find was at the start of July.

The Mt Gox hack had occurred.

They interview Gavin Andresen (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_Andresen), a key Bitcoin developer of the early days. He was also the guy who launched the Bitcoin Faucet and gave away almost 20,000BTC.

The sentiment of the article is still relatively balanced, they don't claim that it is dead, but understandably there are also a lot more questions raised.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/04/business/media/04link.html

Thoughts:

I was surprised not to see more negativity from mainstream media at this point.

But at this stage big business hadn't seen it as a threat in any way.

If you read that first article in the New York Times, and placed $1000 into Bitcoin at that time at $8.60, it would have bought 116.27BTC. Today valued at approximately $3.14 million.

This proves that you can read something in the New York Times and still be early.