Btc 2014 latest news

This is part of "Blockchain Decoded," a series looking at the impact of blockchain, bitcoin and cryptocurrency on our lives.

Thunk. That's the sound of bitcoin investors bopping their foreheads on their keyboards through early 2018 as the price of the cryptocurrency plummets (currently down to a value of around $10,191 from a high near $20,000 last year). I'm a bitcoin investor of sorts, but my forehead is unmarked by QWERTY keys.

In 2014, bitcoin was still the new and rising kid on the block -- a mystery, a temptation, a promise. The idea of a bitcoin ATM where you could exchange cash for pieces of cryptocurrency felt like a fresh and daring idea dancing at the edges of financial regulations. And I was one of the first US users of this newfangled kind of machine.

A tiny bitcoin investment, made in pursuit of a story, kicked off a multi-year saga of forgetfulness, password frustration and the kind of jackpot that would make a hardened slots player shrug and reach for the bandit's arm. This is the tale of my fraction of a bitcoin.

Enchanted Bitcoins, a company that hasn't updated its website since 2014, installed one of the nation's first bitcoin ATMs just a few blocks from my house in Albuquerque, New Mexico. On a bright February afternoon, I strolled into the Imbibe bar in the swanky-funky Nob Hill neighborhood and found Enchanted Bitcoins founder Eric Stromberg manning the ATM amid a haze of cigar smoke.

I fed my $20 in cash into the Lamassu-made kiosk. Lamassu now has 275 working cryptocurrency ATMs worldwide, but Albuquerque was its first in the US.

My paper bill earned me a tiny 0.02747908 fraction of a bitcoin, held in a digital wallet from Blockchain, a software platform that lets you safely store your digital currency. A little too safely, as it turned out for me. That day, my bitcoin bit was worth $17.45 after fees and price fluctuations.

Forgotten, but not gone

I wrote the article. I moved on. I paid little attention to bitcoin. In 2017, the bitcoin currency market soared to insane new heights as news outlets trumpeted headlines like "Bitcoin: How high could the price go?" and "What happens if the bitcoin bubble pops?" And something stirred in the back of my brain. Wait ... didn't I have a bitcoin investment?