Journey from an abstract concept to being the world’s largest Cryptocurrency
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Bitcoin came into existence as a disruptive technology that could potentially transform the way people choose to transact globally. It’s been 10 years since Satoshi Nakamoto and Martti Malmithe, two of the very first developers registered the domain “Bitcoin.org”.
Bitcoin’s journey so far has been two-edged either a bane or a boon. Despite its detractors, Bitcoin today is undoubtedly worlds largest cryptocurrency with over 52% market dominance.
Over the past 10 years, Bitcoin has attempted to revolutionize the global banking and finance ecosystem. Bitcoin has evoked the notion of digital currencies and has been the catalyst for asset tokenization.
Bitcoin and its legacy
Source: All You need to know about 10 Years of Bitcoin
Bitcoin was the byproduct of Nakamoto losing faith in the conventional banking system and fiat currency after the 2008 subprime crisis and the eventual financial markets meltdown.
Satoshi Nakamoto himself wrote
“The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust. Banks must be trusted to hold our money and transfer it electronically, but they lend it out in waves of credit bubbles with barely a fraction in reserve. We have to trust them with our privacy, trust them not to let identity thieves drain our accounts.”
Bitcoin’s source code is based on over 9000 Nodes
Bitcoin’s decentralized system has been invented to distribute the authority so as to prevent any single person or group from controlling the financial markets. Instead, the co-owners have control over final publications many a time, the activity is systemized over the public pull request process.
Source: Coin.dance
Increasing popular adoption
In 2009, Bitcoin was in its nasceny. Fast forward to 2018 — Bitcoin saw an all-time high of almost $20,000 to an annual low of $3,125. Having experienced this wild swing, Bitcoin has indeed matured as a financial instrument in the market.
The increased adoption is also evident from the fact that the number of people buying, trading and googling ‘Bitcoin’ has only increased over time, reaching record-high levels in Q4 2017. Again, in line with the prices, even this trend seems to have plummeted in the second half of 2018.
Source: Coin.dance
As Bitcoin gains traction among lawmakers and legacy financial companies, the number of businesses, institutions and even banks accepting Bitcoin are increasing at a steady pace. In line with market evolution, regulatory bodies have followed suit with countries such as South Korea, Japan, USA, India, Switzerland, Canada, etc imposing restrictions and demanding accountability.
Despite, the regulations, Bitcoin’s presence and adoption have been on the rise with 110 countries, almost 40% of the planet already being in the pro-Bitcoin list.
Source: Coin.dance
Future of Bitcoin
The recent bubble burst and the subsequent plateau in Bitcoin prices are showing early signs of the market maturing. High ticket pump and dump in Bitcoin is no longer frequent in the market. Before altcoins, traders usually succumbed to adverse price movements caused by high ticket pumps and dumps. However, with more altcoins and stable coins coming into the market, the trades have shown early signs of smoothing.
The adverse market developments have not dampened the spirits of entrepreneurs and thought leaders who continue to enter the market with new launches.
As of this writing, experts believed that the Bitcoin price and crypto market were stable and recovering from the recent crash. The total crypto market cap value was over $64 billion with Bitcoin’s dominance over the marketplace spiking to more than 52%.
The reason behind the inventors of Bitcoin choosing to be anonymous?
Source: All You need to know about 10 Years of Bitcoin
Given the history, in 2007 one of the first digital currencies, E-Gold, was shut down by the government on grounds of money laundering. Also, in the past, there were instances where a Hawaiian resident tried to do something in digital currency landscape but eventually was charged with violating federal law and sentenced to six months of house arrest, along with 3-year probation.
There’s a good reason why the inventors of Bitcoin chose to stay anonymous. By maintaining anonymity, they’ve avoided all the adverse legal entities, making their anonymity at least partially responsible for the currency’s success.
The vision behind the creation of Bitcoin was to give an alternative to everyone who is not satisfied with the conventional banking system. Only time will tell if Bitcoin will manage to accomplish this.