Bitcoin has literally been on a wild ride in the past decade. Its price has climbed from a mere dollar to four-figures now. It has also lost 50% of its value in a span of one year. Dropped from the ashes, it has further continued to shine. Moreover, it gave new meaning to blockchain technology and gave birth to an entire industry of cryptocurrencies. Its reign has evolved to the level that it has been named as the ‘best performing asset’ of the decade.
Another shift in the poster child of crypto is the stance of major media outlets towards cryptocurrency and more specifically bitcoin. The media channels have started covering the progress in the crypto-blockchain sphere from tracking the latest developments to analyzing the crypto markets.
Let’s look at some of the important events that have happened in the past year, in retrospective to bitcoin and blockchain.
The Unprecedented Resilience of Bitcoin
As Brian Amstrong pointed out in his recent post, bitcoin has died 379 times. Sometimes through its speculative prices or through a flaw in its prototype- a number of media outlets have predicted the death of bitcoin.
But even amidst everything, bitcoin has thrived and how! Just recently, it has been regarded as the best performing asset of the decade. Despite popular belief, bitcoin continues to stand strong and has further developed an asset class within itself.
Surging Bitcoin Trends
Another factor that has always supported the rising reign of bitcoin is the google search trends. In the past few years, bitcoin has remained one of the top searched queries at all times.
Moreover, in a decade there has been a tremendous increase in the google scholarly articles pertaining to bitcoin. As reported by this website, there were roughly 83 Google scholarly articles for bitcoin in 2009. In a mere decade, this has climbed to 14,000 articles giving a boost of almost 561%. The year 2019, has taken Bitcoin to new heights.
Bitcoin Futures Trading With the Launch of Bakkt
The year 2019 also witnessed a new direction to bitcoin with crypto derivatives and futures trading. Stepping first into this game is Bakkt, a platform that offers bitcoin futures contracts.
The launch of a regulated bitcoin futures trading platform suggests the mainstream adoption into this space. Moreover, this has further expanded a new direction of crypto derivatives in the upcoming decade.
Blockchain and Crypto-Friendly Laws
One of the factors contributing to the maturing of the crypto industry is the governmental friendly laws and regulations made this year.
In the U.S., Wyoming became the first state to enact 13 laws that support the development of blockchain technology. Germany joined this list by taking a proactive approach that allows banks to act as custodian services for cryptocurrencies. Closely after this, the French government also took a regulatory stand for ICO’s.
Corporations Moving Into This Space
The end of a decade also gave way towards big shot organizations moving with different projects. The big bank J.P. Morgan has announced its plans to launch JPM coin, representing fiat currency.
Another big news was Facebook coming up with its own project Libra based on the concept of blockchain technology. While the project has turned heads, including regulators, there is no denying the fact that major organizations are backing it.
Final Thoughts
With all the positive and negative developments in this space, bitcoin has been standing tall through all. More importantly, even with World leaders like Donald Trump claiming ‘not a fan of bitcoin’, it has yet matched these remarks with unprecedented resilience.
The year 2020 will also be an important year as an upcoming bitcoin halving will reduce the rewards to half. Analysts predict major jump in the price of bitcoin after the event. Well, here’s finger crossed!