The year 2014 has been long on Bitcoin news. For the most part it has been good, the industry has grown by leaps and bounds as more investment pours into Bitcoin projects, merchants from Dell to Microsoft have accepted bitcoins for services, and even PayPal partnered its way in. It has not been all rainbows and roses, however, with several hacks, arrests, and the fallout from Silk Road 1.0.

In light of the past year, though, it’s been an amazing ride.

Below is a month-by-month highlight of adoption events, hacks, and big news as seen by the Bitcoin community. This post is split into two parts, this is Bitcoin Yearly January through June, keep reading for July through December.

January: $760 – $853; high $1007 on Jan 6

By January 2014, Overstock.com launches availability of bitcoin transactions for merchant products in what seemed to be a first-to-market coup shortly after announcing that the company would be accepting BTC. Soon after going live with bitcoin payments, Overstock’s CEO Patrick Byrne announces $124,000 in bitcoin sales in 24 hours.

BitPay teams up with Zynga Inc. to experiment with BTC for cow-clicking and TigerDirect also joins BitPay. TigerDirect soon reveals over $500,000 USD worth of products bought with BTC in the first three days.

In crime news, BitInstant CEO Charlie Shrem is arrested on charges of money laundering and possible connection to the activities of Silk Road.

New York State’s superintendent of financial services, Benjamin Lawsky, announces his intention to create “BitLicense,” a regulatory framework designed to encompass Bitcoin-related business ventures in New York. This entire endeavor will not go over well in the coming months. The proposal is released in July and that’s when the fireworks start.

February: $847 – $563

February marks the end of the Mt. Gox troubles as the teetering exchange finally topples and numerous problems are revealed in the aftermath. By the end of February, much of the Bitcoin industry of the day is calling Mt. Gox insolvent and month-long troubles comes to an end. Mt. Gox officially files for bankruptcy in Japan on Friday, February 28th.

During this month the “transaction ID malleability” exploit is also discovered, which involves poor programming on the part of exchanges that do not double-check transaction IDs. Many exchanges discover they were vulnerable and malicious parties attempted to take advantage by DDoSing exchanges. Mt. Gox also blamed this exploit for its troubles. However, a multitude of exchanges also promote rapid fixes or prove they are not vulnerable.

Apple makes no friends this month by blocking Bitcoin wallets from the Apple iPhone app store, namely the Blockchain.info app. This leads Bitcoin community members to record themselves destroying their own iPhones.

Microsoft beats Google to BTC conversion by building it into Bing; it will take Google until July to do this.

March: $549 – $448

The fallout from Mt. Gox’s devastating losses linger in the Bitcoin community with much speculation as to the disposition of nearly 750,000 BTC missing from the exchange (approximately $411.5 million at the exchange rate of the time.)

Newsweek reporter Leah McGrath Goodman “finds” Satoshi Nakamoto, the legendary creator of Bitcoin by claiming that he is Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto, California resident and 64-year-old physicist. It’s obvious to the community that it is unlikely that Dorian Nakamoto is the mysterious Satoshi. The Newsweek report and following sudden attention cause great strife for Nakamoto leading to an outpouring of generosity and calls to leave him alone from the Bitcoin community. Throughout it all Nakamoto unequivocally denies that he had anything to do with Bitcoin.

United States Internal Revenue Service announces intention to tax Bitcoins as property along with similar virtual currencies. This leads to questions as to exactly how bitcoin holders and miners need to report earnings in bitcoins for taxes in the US.

Mt. Gox finds 200,000 missing bitcoins, valued at the time around $116 million. The number of total lost coins is updated to a potential 850,000, minus 200,000, leaving 650,000 still unaccounted for.

April: $459 – $446

The fall in Bitcoin market value leads to speculation that Chinese regulation may be behind depressed prices. However, rumors of China cracking down on Bitcoin seem unfounded.

Heartbleed, a bug affecting the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) of the web, is discovered to affect most websites and web encryption implementations. Bitcoin Core 0.9.1 is released to mitigate the Heartbleed bug and the entire community is urged to upgrade. Shortly after the discovery of Heartbleed most of the Bitcoin industry leaders immediately audit their systems and check in. Bitstamp and Bitfinex suspend operations briefly to fix their systems. Coinbase and BitPay announce that their systems are unaffected by Heartbleed.

Reddit /r/technology is caught suppressing Bitcoin headlines. Threads created in the subreddit are discovered to silently vanish if they mention Bitcoin, Dogecoin, NSA, net neutrality, Comcast, or Snowden.

Bloomberg adds a Bitcoin market prices to the Bloomberg Professional service, providing over 32,000 subscribers a real-time view of current Bitcoin market value.

The San Jose Earthquakes announce that bitcoin will be transacted at their new upcoming stadium for tickets and potentially merchandise.

May: $448 – $629

Butterfly Labs, vendor of ASIC Bitcoin mining equipment, receives 283 Federal Trade Commission (FTC) complaints involving consumer practices. Online publication Ars Technica uses a FOIA request to the FTC about Butterfly Labs revealing the number of complaints. The complaints, which begin in September 2013 and end in early April 2014, represent a sum of $1 million in customer orders.

BitPay receives an investment of $30 million in what the Wall Street Journal calls “the biggest venture-capital investment in the digital-currency industry.”

Circle announces  its consumer product in Amsterdam at this year’s Bitcoin 2014. Circle appears to be a wallet and exchange service extremely similar to Coinbase. Although Circle will not officially exit beta until later this year in October.

Overstock CEO Patrick Bryne makes news again by announcing that Overstock.com has earned over $1.6 million in bitcoin sales in the past five months.

June: $623 – $635

Yahoo! Finance adds a Bitcoin ticker under the “BTCUSD=X” tag. Shortly thereafter Google stealthily also adds BTC to its own Google Finance.

Dish Network and REEDS Jewelers partner with Coinbase. Expedia announces accepting bitcoins for hotel accommodations, an industry first.

BitPay announces the St. Petersburg Bitcoin Bowl, to be held in December, the bowl is the first-of-its-kind Bitcoin branded football game.

Canadian bitcoin gambling site Just-Dice shuts down operations. Changes to Canada’s regulation of bitcoins as money leads the operators of Just-Dice to work on coming into line with the new laws.

Bitcoin market index service BitcoinAverage.com, used by SiliconAngle for weighted bitcoin prices, has been running for one year! The BitcoinAverage API serves over 4,000 active connections and serves Bitcoin Wallet for Android and Lamassu Bitcoin ATMs.

The Year 2014 for Bitcoin

Bitcoin in the year 2014 had its ups and its downs, the price mostly fell, but giant merchants came on board all year from Dell to Microsoft. Looking into 2015 it may not be clear sailing for the digital currency, as there’s a lot of room to grow and change, but it seems like 2014 is a good foundational year for bringing big companies on board.

For July through December 2014 keep reading here.