On October 5, 2009, NewLibertyStandard published the first-ever exchange rate for Bitcoin.
$1 = 1,309.03 BTC ($0.000764 per BTC)
The methodology: divide $1.00 by the average amount of electricity required to run a computer with high CPU for a year (1,331.5 kWh), multiplied by the average residential cost of electricity in the United States for the previous year ($0.1136), divided by 12 months, divided by the number of bitcoins generated over the past 30 days.
In other words, Bitcoin’s first price was determined by the real-world cost of the electricity needed to mine it.
Shortly after, on October 12, 2009, Martti Malmi sold 5,050 BTC to NewLibertyStandard for $5.02 via PayPal — the first known exchange of Bitcoin for fiat currency.
[At 2025 prices exceeding $100,000 per BTC, those 5,050 bitcoins would be worth over $500 million.]