The first bitcoin exchange, New Liberty Standard went live giving Bitcoin its first valuation

The New Liberty Standard (NLS) exchange is a notable part of Bitcoin’s early history. It went live in October 2009 and is recognized as the world’s first crypto exchange. The NLS was pioneering in establishing a market value for Bitcoin based on real-world commodities, specifically the cost of electricity used to mine them.

The exchange calculated Bitcoin’s value by dividing $1.00 by the annual electricity cost to run a high CPU computer for a year, further divided by the number of bitcoins produced over a month by the computing unit. This innovative method provided one of the earliest formal valuations of Bitcoin.

Although the New Liberty Standard did not remain dominant for long and eventually faded into obscurity, its contributions to the early days of cryptocurrency valuation and exchange remain a significant part of Bitcoin’s history.