what I don't understand is how it all started. noone would buy something that has no value (the first mined coins). so who bought the first coins? It might have started as a pump and dump, and once this caused a valorization it caused a chain reaction.
Noone designed it as a pump and dump scheme. It was designed as a digital currency (as were all the digital currencies from the early 90's).
It was obvious that an exchange was needed to determine a price for it, but even before one became available, the first transaction occurred when a miner offered 10000BTC for a couple of pizzas. No pizza shop accepted them, so an aspiring bitcoin user paid fiat for the pizzas and made the trade to obtain his bitcoins. That determined the first defined price (about .2 cents). Interestingly, it wasn't zero before that really...it was undefined.
so one guy bought BTCs because of something like a joke, but how did the market build itself? who started to buy coins, and why?
Hmm. It was fun, but I wouldn't call it a joke. The digital currency work all thru the 90's was very serious stuff.
I guess the answer to why it built itself was that people realized it had a future and wanted to be involved to learn about it. I bought into various digital currencies back as far as the early 90's just to be involved for the same reasons. Then exchanges came along...
intresting, but I still don't understand how this could cause the initial "pump" (while I can perfectly understand all the following, once there was the first one)
The initial pump was created by bots(trading algorithms), that in combination with silkroad(long gone now) gave bitcoin a "fake" value really.
And i say fake because demand was never that big, but the bots were doing a great job.
For a few big investors with early adoption Bitcoin was a great opportunity to make billions, and they did.
How? Well, they got in Bitcoin when the value was just cents, bought loads, pumped the hell out of the price and then let it drop, nice and slowly like it has been happening this year.
Then they started with the altcoins, pump and dump, see ya!
This is what i think and some may agree, some don't.