The first Bitcoin trade was made through Paypal in exchange for US dollars

The first recorded Bitcoin trade for US dollars through PayPal took place on October 12, 2009, and it was a landmark event in the history of Bitcoin. This transaction was conducted by Martti Malmi, a Finnish computer science student known online as Sirius, who sold 5,050 bitcoins for $5.02. This trade valued each Bitcoin at approximately $0.0009.
 

The transaction was facilitated through the New Liberty Standard Exchange, set up by a BitcoinTalk forum member, NewLibertyStandard. The exchange rate was calculated based on the cost of electricity required to run a computer with high CPU for a year, divided by the number of bitcoins generated by the operator’s computer over the past 30 days.
 

This early exchange rate was not determined by market demand but rather by the costs associated with mining Bitcoin.