Summary, History and Status of Bitcoin (BTC) — 2024 Edition

Summary, History and Status of Bitcoin (BTC) — 2024 Edition

Summary, History and Status of Bitcoin (BTC) — 2024 Edition

…and how to make money on it in 2024?

Layer 1 Chains

·

32 min

Summary, History and Status of Bitcoin (BTC) — 2024 Edition

…and how to make money on it in 2024?

Layer 1 Chains

·

32 min

Summary, History and Status of Bitcoin (BTC) — 2024 Edition

…and how to make money on it in 2024?

Layer 1 Chains

·

32 min

Summary, History and Status of Bitcoin (BTC) — 2024 Edition

…and how to make money on it in 2024?

Layer 1 Chains

·

32 min

TL;DR: With a new update or project being released almost every day, it’s clear the crypto ecosystem is constantly evolving. Bitcoin has gone through a lot of ups and downs to reach the level it’s at today — but it’s just the beginning. Knowing what brought it here and why it was created will lead you to make better decisions when investing or simply using Bitcoin.

In this article, we’re gonna dive into the Bitcoin ecosystem, answer all the $BTC related questions and even more. Prepare yourself for a history lesson and a journey to the future of Bitcoin!

What is Bitcoin (BTC)?

Bitcoin is the first successful decentralized cryptocurrency and payment system, launched in 2009 by its anonymous creator known as Satoshi Nakamoto. Bitcoin represents the most basic implementation of a distributed ledger. Its main characteristics are part of every subsequent network under the “blockchain” terminology.

These characteristics are: immutability, transparency, consensus, decentralization, and security.

Immutability means that the confirmed transactions aka ‘blocks’ cannot be altered. As each block gets processed, it is broadcast to the peer-to-peer computer network of users called nodes, which hold a copy of the digital ledger. Nodes check the previous history of the ledger to see if the transaction is valid and if the majority of nodes agree then it’s added to the network.

The transparency and immutability of the ledger are vitally important in creating a trustless environment. Anyone can see the history of transactions and check for themselves whether the process is correct.

To ensure the network is secure, Bitcoin has a set of rules by which participants need to agree on. In a traditional system, this role belongs to a central entity like the bank, or the service provider. People have to trust the central entity is honest and will report their transaction correctly. History has proven that trust assumptions have been repeatedly breached, with central banks deciding to print money at will, or governments pressuring payment providers to freeze accounts deemed dangerous.

Bitcoin’s verification system is based on the motto “don’t trust, verify.” Trust in central authority is replaced by a coordination mechanism between participants called consensus. Over time many different mechanisms have been designed, ranging from Proof of Stake to novel ones called Proof of Spacetime. Each one hopes to achieve the best way of securing the network they are built for.


Nodes in the Bitcoin network rely on the Proof of Work consensus to reach an unanimous agreement. Proof of Work means that Bitcoin gets its security from miners that solve a computationally challenging puzzle in order to create new blocks in the Bitcoin blockchain.

Mining is an energy intensive process that guarantees work has been done in order to find the solution, hence the name Proof of Work. Spending energy resources to validate blocks is a feature, not a bug. Once the effort has been expended, the block cannot be changed without redoing the work. As later blocks are chained after it, the work to change the block would include redoing all the blocks after it. 

The Proof of Work consensus is considered to be the most secure. Attempting to change a single block would cost billions of dollars and it would rise exponentially with each block mined, assuming the attacker managed to take over 51% of the computing power (hashrate).

Because Bitcoin is the oldest blockchain in existence, it is also the most decentralized network. Millions of people all over the world are participating in the consensus, keeping the network secure from 51% attacks.

Fast-forward to today, Bitcoin is a flourishing network that grows daily, all powered by its native coin. The native asset of Bitcoin, $BTC, is used actively throughout the network, from miners to users.

Miners are awarded with newly minted BTC in exchange for their work. This adds an incentive for nodes to support the network, and provides a way to initially distribute coins into circulation, since there is no central authority to issue them. The incentive can also be funded with transaction fees paid by users to have their transaction added.

BTC is a deflationary token due to the way its tokenomics have been planned. This means that new BTC coins are created with each block and the amount gets halved every 210,000 blocks. The Bitcoin inflation rate sits currently at around 1.66% and gets lower every four years.


The tokenomics of Bitcoin also specifies a maximum amount of tokens that will ever be created. The maximum amount that will ever be minted by the protocol is 21 million BTC.

As previously mentioned, Bitcoin has been designed to be highly secure and decentralized. Being the first implementation of a peer-to-peer payment system, it was crucial that the network can withstand nation state attacks and deflect greedy miners.

The network achieved resiliency at the cost of speed. Mining a Bitcoin block takes around 10 minutes, which caps the network speed at just 7 transactions per second. To address this shortcoming, developers have come up with Lightning Network, an off-chain scaling solution to increase transaction throughput.


Lightning Network has been in development since 2015 and it is widely considered the best scaling solution for Bitcoin found so far. One of the criticisms to LN is that nodes are able to censor transactions on the Lightning layer, but the benefits outweigh the disadvantages. Currently, LN is being widely integrated with legacy payments services and developers are working hard at perfecting the network.

Mining, however, is not the only way network participants like yourself can earn more Bitcoin. Read our Bitcoin Mining & Staking guide for exact steps and best methods to earn more crypto like $BTC right from your home.

When was Bitcoin (BTC) created?

Bitcoin (BTC) was born during one of the most chaotic financial environments in US history. The Bitcoin chain was made public in 2009, but before that, a couple of important events happened. Most events revolve around the evolution of digital assets.

The first meaningful event is the invention of e-gold. Long before Bitcoin, there was a company called e-gold that was started in 1996, an entire 13 years before Bitcoin was released.

The idea was simple: take on central banks head first by creating an encrypted anonymous currency that was based on a fixed supply of $71 million worth of gold, where users can make instant transfers of value to other accounts in transactions as small one the-thousandth of a gram of gold. That way, you couldn’t just print more money like the US dollar, the money could be divided ways down smaller than a US dollar, and the system was somewhat decentralized, having servers in Germany, Dubai, and all over the world.


In other words, e-gold was the precursor to Bitcoin, and it took off. By the year 2000, e-gold went parabolic. Peter Thiel, co-founder of e-gold by the time, meets with the founders of e-gold on a beach in Angola, and their eyes were set on a revolution against central banks. The team had lofty vision of integrating with PayPal and making e-gold the new monetary standard. 

By 2004, there were over 1 million e-gold accounts, making e-gold the first digital currency ever to gain widespread adoption. At its peak in 2006, e-gold was processing more than $2 worth of transactions with just 71 million worth of e-gold in circulation. But there was a problem. E-gold was a corporation formed in the Caribbean island of Nevis — one of the most secretive tax havens nonetheless.

But their corporate officers weren’t anonymous and they were based in South Florida. Shortly after Peter Thiel met the founders on that faithful day on a beach in Angola, fraud floods the system. Criminals were using e-gold to accept payment from their victims to fuel their scams and Ponzi schemes. Hackers were compromising e-gold accounts. And when victims went to the government to complain, the bureaucrats didn’t understand the difference between e-gold, the company and the actual criminals. To them, the criminals were one and the same, and e-gold became the scapegoat. 


Three months later after the investigation, e-gold was discontinued and sued Peter Thiel for libel. The founders settled without any chance of responding to the allegations. Despite its adoption, e-gold was shot down by the government.

Fast-forward to 2007, and the US Treasury in conjunction with the Department of Justice indebted e-gold for money laundering and money transmitting under the Patriot Act. A year later, e-gold pled guilty to all charges. People involved didn’t go to jail — they just agreed to shut down the company and go away. 

Another meaningful event happened five short months later, when the global financial crisis kicked in. It was the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression in 1929. And it all started from predatory lending targeting low-income buyers, coupled with excessive risk-taking from global financial institutions. To dig a little deeper, it all began in 2003, with the Federal Reserve lowering the federal funds rate from 6.5% to 1% in June 2003. This was a boost for the economy by making it easy for businesses and consumers to borrow money.

The Fed started raising rates in June 2004, and two years later the Federal funds rate had reached 5.25%, where it remained until August 2007. With so much money readily available, most people took out loans to buy houses. As the demand for houses increased, so did the price, as people were willing to pay more to own a house.


The real hardship began when prices of the houses started to fall in 2006. This means people’s homes were worth less than what they paid for them, but they still had to pay their mortgages. To make matter worse, they couldn’t sell their houses without a major financial loss. Lenders were in trouble as well, since they lended money to subprime borrowers who couldn’t pay them back. It was a house of cards that crumbled fast.

As 2007 got underway, one subprime lender after another filed for bankruptcy. During February and March, more than 25 subprime lenders went under. For the first time since the Great Depression, the US was at systemic risk. In the coming months, the Federal Reserve and other central banks would take coordinated action to provide billions of dollars in loans to the global credit markets. Their actions did little to spread the contagion, with the carnage spreading across the financial sector.

By the summer of 2008, IndyMac Bank became one of the largest banks ever to fail in the US. Soon after, Wall Street bank Lehman Brothers in September marked the largest bankruptcy in US history. 

The public was outraged as they helplessly watched their assets get devalued. Meanwhile, the bankers responsible for the collapse were bailed out by the Fed, without facing any consequences.


In the midst of the scandal, on October 31, 2008, a little old whitepaper was released titled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.” The author wasn’t incorporated in some secrecy haven this time — it chose to be anonymous, going by the name Satoshi Nakamoto.

Later on Peter Thiel had a theory: the inventor of Bitcoin may have been on that beach in Angola and learned that you had to be anonymous in order to make it work. Having even a small company was too governmentally linked and the idea was bound to fail. The corporation was being replaced by an algorithm, and the person was completely unknown. 


The introductory paragraph of the Bitcoin Whitepaper outlines why the creator thinks that a trustless cash system is needed in the first place. The main reason stated is that traditional payment systems used in commercial settings operating via financial institutions such as banks have a number of flaws.

One issue was that traditional payments involve high transaction and mediation costs, often times without any real reasoning. People are essentially paying for altering numbers on a spreadsheet. This is an oversimplified explanation, but it still didn’t make sense.

The second issue was that traditional payments were prone to fraud, and the weak link is always the third party. The Bitcoin whitepaper proposes a system in which third parties, such as escrow services, can easily be implemented by triggering some type of coded action.

Bitcoin was a revelation in the cryptography circles who immediately supported the idea. Several experts had reviewed the paper and found the implementation sound. 

On 3 January 2009, the Bitcoin network came into existence with Satoshi Nakamoto mining the genesis block of bitcoin (block number 0), which had a reward of 50 bitcoins. The next Bitcoin block embedded the following message: “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.

The message refers to the headline in The Times, published in January 3, 2009. This note pointed to the instability caused by the fractional-reserve banking. For the small community at the time, and later for the population, it became clear that Bitcoin was the first real threat to the world government. 

Who created Bitcoin (BTC)?

Bitcoin was created by Satoshi Nakamoto following the Global Financial Crisis in 2008. To this day, the creator of Bitcoin remains anonymous. However, several people involved in Bitcoin’s first days can bring us closer to answering the question: Who is/are Satoshi Nakamoto?

In order to be able to create Bitcoin, the candidates must be fluent in coding in C++, and have a thorough understanding of how the economy works. It is also important to mention that the candidate must have come from the cryptography community, which makes it harder to pinpoint his identity. After years of research, the community has agreed on 5 possible identities. 

One of the first supporters, adopters, contributors to bitcoin and receiver of the first bitcoin transaction was programmer Hal Finney. Born on 4 May 1956, Hal Finney was an American software developer who went on to work at PGP Corporation, a software company that sold “Pretty Good Privacy.”


Finney was a noted cypherpunk activist. During the early 1990s, in addition to being a regular poster on the cypherpunks listserver, Finney ran two anonymous remailers, a server that could execute commands without revealing the controller. Further cryptographic activism included running a (successful) contest to break the export-grade encryption Netscape used.

One of his publications ended up being fundamental for Bitcoin, specifically in 2004 he published RPOW, a review of HashCash. Previously, in 1993 he published a study about Detecting Double Spend and another about “Digital Cash and privacy.” Until the arrival of Bitcoin he collaborated on various crypto mailing lists and is one of the founders and most influential people in the movement Cypherpunk.

Hal Finney is considered to be the first person in touch with Satoshi. After Satoshi he was the first person to download and execute the Bitcoin client. On 12 January 2009, he received 10 BTC from Satoshi, making it the first bitcoin transaction. 


Unfortunately, on March 2013, Finney posted on Bitcointalk that he was suffering from ALS, rendering him permanently immobilized. On August 28, 2014, Hal paid for his cryopreservation by combining his life insurance and fan-donated bitcoins. Hope is that humanity will finally be able to find a cure for ALS, and revive Hal so we can hear about Satoshi from himself. 

In the early days, Satoshi Nakamoto mined around 1 million bitcoins. During this period, Satoshi communicated regularly on the bitcointalk.org forum, but he never stuck around. On December 12, 2010, he posted a message about adding DDoS controls too Bitcoin. He logged on again on December 13, and just like that he was never heard from again.

But then, in 2014, a high profile magazine Newsweek published an article titled “The Face Behind Bitcoin,” claiming to have identified who Satoshi was once and for all. And just like that, the world was introduced to Dorian Nakamoto, a Japanese-American man living in California, whose birth name was Satoshi Nakamoto. What was interesting was that aside from his birth name, he had all the expertise to be declared a suspect.

He was trained as a physicist at California State Polytechnic University, he worked as a system engineer on classified defense projects, and he worked as a computer engineer for tech and financial companies. He was laid off twice in the early 90s, which led him to become a libertarian. And to top it off, when asked during a brief in-person interview, Nakamoto led a slip that he was indeed the inventor of Bitcoin, saying that: “I am no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss it. It’s been turned over to other people. They are in charge of it now. I have no connection.”


And just like that, Nakamoto’s life was turned upside down. Reporters came by his house, reporters were chasing him around, and Nakamoto proceeded to deny all the clips that he was the inventor of Bitcoin — even hosting a Reddit AMA to discuss it. He said he thought the reporter was referring to another project in which he was involved in with one of the pervious jobs. Later that same day, the real Satoshi Nakamoto logged on for the first time in five years to post the following message: “I am not Dorian Nakamoto.”

The case seemed to be solved. But then six months after the message, the same account that posted that said the account had been hacked. To make things crazier, Hal Finney lived just ten blocks away from Dorian Nakamoto, for 10 years.

The third possible creator is Adam Black, who now serves as the CEO of Blockstream, a crypto infrastructure company focused on Bitcoin. But before all this, when the Bitcoin whitepaper was released, Adam Black was referenced in the whitepaper. Not only did Adam Black have the expertise and motivation to make something like Bitcoin, but the circumstantial evidence fits.


Adam Back had been interesting in creating something like Bitcoin since 1998. In fact, he had over 700 posts published on the cyberpunk forum. And yet, when the Bitcoin whitepaper was released, he showed no interest. It seems like Adam Back stopped from publishing any academic papers between 2005 and 2011. What’s more, his style and Satoshi’s writing styles are the same: the use of British English and double-space after period.

Adam Back joins the Bitcoin community with his first post on April 18, 2013. Instead of acting like a newcomer, he immediately starts telling people what to do. What’s more, Adam Black was also proficient in C++. Adam Black repeatedly denied he’s Satoshi Nakamoto.

In December 2013, Skye Grey linked Nick Szabo, a computer scientist who invented smart contracts, to the Bitcoin white paper based on his writing style. In 1998, Szabo designed a mechanism for a decentralized digital currency he called “bit gold.” Although bit gold was never implemented, it’s been considered a direct precursor to the Bitcoin architecture.

In Szabo’s bit gold structure, a participant would dedicate computer power to solving cryptographic puzzles. In bit gold network, solved puzzles would become part of the next challenge, creating essentially a chain of verified blocks — a blockchain.


Perhaps what made people believe that Nic Szabo was Satoshi Nakamoto was a blog he released in 2008, describing his intentions to create a live version of bit gold. Nic Szabo denies any speculation that he is the creator of Bitcoin.

In 2015, Wire published an article saying that a new guy was the creator of Bitcoin — an Australian computer scientist by the name Craig Steven Wright. Wire wrote that Craig Wright either created Bitcoin or was a good enough scammer to make people believe that he did. That same day, a news media outlet published a story claiming that Craig Wright and David Kleiman, who died in 2013, were behind the creation of Bitcoin.


Obviously, people wanted proof. All Craig had to do was to move some coins from one of Satoshi’s wallets to another, but he didn’t. As the years went by, people became more skeptical. Then things got more weird. The brother of Dave Kleiman sued Craig Wright demanding half of the bitcoins Craig Wright allegedly owned. But then in 2020, one of the 145 addresses Craig Wright was supposed to control posted this message:

“Craig Steven Wright is a fraud. He doesn’t have the keys used to sign this message. We are all Satoshi.”

So, it seems that Satoshi is still alive. With no more viable Satoshi suspects, we may have to face the reality that the genius behind Bitcoin may never be unmasked. Before he died, John McAfee said that he was “99% sure” who Satoshi was, a group of 11 people who developed Bitcoin over a period five years. But he refused to say who it was.

In his opinion, Craig Wright was definitely involved, but he wasn’t the only one. And McAfee isn’t alone — a lot of people believe that Bitcoin’s code was too complex to be written by one person. It is possible that each of the people we covered were part of Satoshi.

This could be a possibility, as they could have agreed to make the 1 million BTC fortune untouchable unless all 11 members agree. But if that’s case, why were 640 bitcoins transferred from one wallets rumored to be Satoshi’s on July 12, 2021?

Maybe Peter Thiel was right. Maybe it’s better for Satoshi to stay anonymous for the sake of their own health. If the government knew who Satoshi was, the government would immediately arrest him and do bad things to him.

How is the Bitcoin (BTC) token used?

The BTC coin is the native asset for the Bitcoin network. All assets in the Bitcoin ecosystem are denominated in BTC, which makes it the default unit of account.

BTC is the fuel that powers transactions and block creation on the Bitcoin chain. We sometimes refer to it as “gas”. Its primary use case is securing the network and keeping actors aligned to the same principles. Besides the transaction fees, miners get rewarded with a fixed number of Bitcoin for each block created.

Block rewards are in direct relation with the value of the asset. Because miners spend energy to mine Bitcoin, the value of Bitcoin should reflect the amount of energy committed. In theory, Bitcoin will rise in value because of the scheduled degrease in block rewards. This event is named “halving” and is responsible for keeping Bitcoin a deflationary asset.

Halvings are scheduled to occur every 210,000 blocks, or roughly every 4 years. Since its inception, Bitcoin was undergone 3 halvings, with the next one set to occur sometime in 2024.


The Bitcoin community is split over the utility of Bitcoin. Some say BTC serves a store of value, while others argue it is works as a means of payment. The main argument for Bitcoin as a store of value is its scarcity. BTC supply is more limited than silver and gold supply, as there will only ever be 21 million BTC introduced to the network’s economy.

On the other hand, Bitcoin has been widely used as means of payments. Due to the pseudonymous nature of BTC wallets, the asset has been an excellent medium for circumventing government oversight. Although Bitcoin is still being used for less legal purposes, most transactions are being made for legit purposes, such as buying pizza, or a property.

Bitcoin is currently listed on multiple exchanges. The major ones are Binance, Coinbase and Kraken. Mining, however, is not the only way network participants like yourself can earn more Bitcoin. Read our Bitcoin Mining & Staking guide for exact steps and best methods to earn more crypto like $BTC right from your home.

Who is developing Bitcoin (BTC) now?

Development on Bitcoin started before 2008 by its anonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. Before disappearing, Satoshi indirectly handed over the reins to Gavin Andresen, who then became the lead developer at Bitcoin Foundation. 

Andresen discovered bitcoin in 2010, considering its design to be brilliant. His first Bitcoin project was a site that then became pretty famous called the “Bitcoin Faucet.” I was giving away five BTC to anyone who went there. Gavin then started to submit code to Satoshi to improve the core system. Over time Satoshi trusted his judgment on the code he wrote.

Gavin explained how Satoshi he pulled a fast one on him because he asked if it’d be OK if he put Gavin’s email address on the Bitcoin homepage. Gavin immediately said yes, not realizing that when he put his address there, he’d take his away. From that day, Gavin Andresen was the person everyone would email when they wanted to know about Bitcoin. Satoshi started stepping back as leader of project and pushing him forward as the leader of the project.


Andresen became the unofficial official “core maintainer” of the open source code that defines the rules of Bitcoin. The combination of Nakamoto’s blessing and Andresen’s years of dedication to improving the code has given him significant status in the Bitcoin community and beyond. The CIA and Washington regulators have asked to him to explain the currency.

In September 2012, Andresen continued the effort to maintain the codebase by creating Bitcoin Foundation, modeled after the Linux Foundation. Its purpose was to restore faith in Bitcoin as a legit technology, unlike the bad reputation it had received in the past.

The founding chairman of the board was Peter Vessenes, a Bitcoin pioneer and the first crypto industry person in the world to advise the US Senate GAO, The US Treasury, and other agencies about Bitcoin. Peter held the role of Executive Director at the Bitcoin Foundation until 2014. Gavin Andresen took the role of chief scientist, but decided to leave in 2018 to teach at University of Massachusetts Amherst.

In June 2013, the foundation received a letter from the California Department of Financial Institutions requesting that they "cease and desist from conducting the business of money transmission in this state.” The Foundation published a detailed response to the regulators, but things took a strange turn. In November 2013, Patrick Murck, general counsel of the Foundation, testified before a US Senate committee convened to assess digital currencies, at which the reception of bitcoin by lawmakers was generally positive.

In January 2014, the foundation's vice-chairman, Charlie Shrem, was arrested for aiding criminals to launder money via his exchange, BitInstant. He resigned later that month and pled guilty in September 2014.

Another controversial member of the board was Mark Karpelès, the founder of the infamous exchange Mt. Gox. Following the 750,000 BTC hack of his exchange, Karpeles resigned as well. Bitcoin Foundation was perceived as a foundation ran by “B” players, and it was in urgent need of better representatives. 

To help regain trust in the foundation, founder of BTCC exchange Bobby Lee and venture capitalist Brock Pierce were appointed to the foundation's board of directors, filling vacancies left by the resignations of Shrem and Karpelès. Later on, ten people resigned from the foundation due to allegations dating from 2000 that Pierce had engaged with underaged girls affairs. And nine members of the foundation resigned following the May election, citing opposition to the appointments and the direction of the organization. 

In 2015, Bitcoin Foundation was in serious financial trouble. This has been kept as a secret for a long time, but after the cash flow dried out, various staff were terminated. Luckily for the Bitcoin community, the Foundation has managed to survive and is still active to this day.

As of today, the Bitcoin Foundation board consists of Llew Claasen, executive director: Brock Pierce, chairman; Bobby Lee, vice chairman; Bruce Fenton, board member; Michael Perklin, board member; Vinny Lingham, board member.

The development of Bitcoin Core is maintained by over 750 individuals. Core developers are not a centralized group of people. There is no leader or project manager who instructs developers on what to build or how. Instead, Core developers are individuals from across the world who each decide for themselves how they want to contribute to Bitcoin.

Bitcoin Core is open source code. Each node operator in the Bitcoin network chooses the version of Bitcoin they would like to run. This means that the Bitcoin Network is composed of tens of thousands of nodes who run dozens of different versions of the Bitcoin software. This system places control over the network firmly in the hands of node operators, not developers and maintainers. If developers integrate a change to Bitcoin Core, but very few Bitcoin nodes integrate those changes, the network will remain unaffected by the changes.

What are the latest updates on Bitcoin (BTC)?

Bitcoin in 2019

2019 caught Bitcoin on a bearish season. After reaching an ATH of almost $20,000, the price came crashing down, leading people to pronounce Bitcoin dead once again. In January 2019, Bitcoin was trading below $4000. 

In the following months, progress was slow, as Bitcoin gradually climbed to $11,000. Despite being the barometer for the entire industry, there were no major announcements regarding Bitcoin. 

Bitcoin in 2020

The year 2020 was a rollercoaster for the Bitcoin enthusiasts. Its “store of value” thesis was put to test when the price crashed 50% in two days as the coronavirus outbreak worsened. In a knee-jerk reaction, investors cashed out and plunged Bitcoin to $5000. Stock markets have been hit as well, leading people to believe that Bitcoin is tightly correlated with traditional markets.

From the outside, perspectives on Bitcoin was still bullish. Its halving was scheduled to take place on May 11. And with it, block rewards would be sliced in half, from 12.5 BTC to 6.25 BTC.  It’s a milestone that was easy to see coming because it happens every 210,000 blocks (approximately every four years) and had happened twice before 2020.


The allure of quick riches attracted many speculative investors, who loaded up on Bitcoin. One of them was Michael Saylor, the CEO of MicroStrategy. Unlike regular investors, Saylor became convinced that Bitcoin will be an effective hedge against the inflation caused by coronavirus. MicroStrategy used money from its treasury assets to purchase over 21,000 BTC.

Michael Saylor tweeted: "Bitcoin is a bank in cyberspace, run by incorruptible software, offering a global, affordable, simple, and secure savings account to billions of people that don’t have the option or desire to run their own hedge fund.”

In July, the firm used $250 million from its treasury assets to buy 21,454 BTC. The company bought an additional $175 million of BTC one month later and another $50 million in early December 2020, swapping cash for Bitcoin as its reserve asset.

By December 2020, MicroStrategy's Bitcoin ownership was valued at $1 billion. Saylor is self-described Bitcoin maximalist, tweeting about it prolifically on his account, speaking at conferences, and giving interviews touting Bitcoin.

Bitcoin in 2021

2021 was Bitcoin’s best year to date, reaching an all time high of $$68,789. This was heavily influenced by a few key events and updates.

Following in Saylor’s steps, Elon Musk announced that Tesla bought $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin, making it the first automaker to invest in the asset. The price of Bitcoin surged to $44,200 immediately after the announcement. With a single purchase, Tesla managed to legitimize Bitcoin as the world’s reserve currency. Social media reactions peaked as the company said it would start accepting bitcoin as a payment method for its products. Some of the enthusiasm soon dropped when people found out they couldn’t buy a Tesla car with BTC.

Several other celebrities such as Snoop Dogg, Paris Hilton, Gwyneth Paltrow, Floyd Mayweather, Kanye West, and Mike Tyson jumped on the crypto hype wagon. Although they had a broader involvement in the crypto space by issuing NFTs, their presence helped Bitcoin reach more people. Furthermore, people were made aware of the decentralization movement.

In September, El Salvador shocked the entire world when it announced Bitcoin has become legal tender, requiring all businesses to accept the cryptocurrency. El Salvador’s President, Nayib Bukele, stated that Bitcoin is a store of value, free from the control of foreign governments. His support of Bitcoin sent a strong message to the IMF, who were looking to lend more money to El Salvador.


Before making the announcement, El Salvador had purchased 500 Bitcoins for a total of $15.3 million. Few months later, they bought another 80 BTC at $19,000 each. The legal tender announcement was followed by a strategy to mine Bitcoin using the country’s volcanoes. President Nayib received support from high profile crypto figures such as Max Keiser and Bitfinex CTO, Paolo Ardoino. Together, they designed a strategy to mine Bitcoin sustainably, which would later power the first Bitcoin City. The President explained that Bitcoin City would be free from income tax, property tax, procurement tax, and city tax. The only taxes that will incur is VAT. 


El Salvador introduced the Chivo Wallet in September 2021, touting its capabilities as an efficient cross-border payment method. The law received mixed reactions from the country’s citizens, who were take by surprise. The old generation was skeptic about a digital currency, while the young and educated became very active on the app. Yet another perk was fee-free transactions. Outside Chivo, BTC transactions can involve large fees. Using a bitcoin ATM can run up charges of up to 20% of the transaction amount. But with Chivo, transactions, conversions from BTC to dollars, and withdrawals at Chivo ATMs incur no fee.

On the development side, Bitcoin went through the Taproot upgrade, its most important upgrade experienced since 2017, when Segregated Witness (SegWit) was activated. Taproot is less controversial than SegWit in the sense that it was a soft fork. The upgrade is compatible with the older versions of the software and won’t need to separate into two different parallel blockchains.

Miners signaled their approval right away, partly because it brought significant gradual improvements to the code. One of the biggest features is the extended smart contract functionality, which can open the door to develop Dapps.

Bitcoin in 2022

The current year has been a hard one for Bitcoin. With the fall of Terra, FTX and the worsening macroeconomic factors, the asset plunged to a low of $16,000. 

The war in Ukraine had a major impact over Bitcoin’s mining profitability. Sanctions over Russia led to energy prices surging around the world. This event spelled bad news for miners, who were already operating on tight margins. Despite the rising energy costs, Bitcoin’s hashrate kept climbing up. The hashrate is an indicator of the energy dedicated to securing the network. In other words, more people than ever were running a miner. This is somewhat of a paradox. If miners were supposed to go bankrupt, how come the hashrate didn’t take a hit?

In the wake of the war between Ukraine and Russia, countries have started to look for alternative methods of settling payments. The fact that the US has a monopoly over the payment rails doesn’t sit well with countries looking to break free from the influence of the United States. Bitcoin represented a viable alternative. In order to finance their Bitcoin treasury, countries like Russia announced plans to mine BTC. Secrecy is an essential part of essential strategy in wars. By the time countries like Russia announce their intentions publicly, they may have already have a BTC mining operation in place.

Since 2021, Terra had announced that it was building up a Bitcoin reserve to maintain the peg of their algorithmically stablecoin, called UST. Do Kwon, the co-founder of Terra, proceeded to buy $1B worth of Bitcoin. People saw Terra as too big to fail. The UST stablecoin had a market cap of $40+ billion, but their token was in a delicate balance. Algorithmic stablecoins rely on two assets to maintain their peg. Users could burn their LUNA for UST, pegged 1:1 to the dollar, or burn their UST for LUNA. If someone were to massively sell any of these assets, it would create an imbalance for the UST dollar peg. This is one of the reasons why Do Kwon allocated $1B in BTC for defending UST’s dollar peg.

The worst scenario happened on May 7. On that faithful day, a whale triggered a bank run by swapping 85 million UST for 84.5 million USDC. In a desperate attempt to stabilize the peg of UST, Do Kwon allegedly sold $1B worth of BTC, but failed. 


It seems like the greed from 2021 finally caught up with the multi-billion dollar crypto hedge funds. The fall of Terra triggered a chain reaction of crypto hedge funds declaring insolvency, pushing down the price of Bitcoin. The cherry on top was FTX declaring insolvency, which killed any chances for BTC to recover from its price slump.

Bitcoin in 2023

2023 has been a much more positive year for Bitcoin. In the light of the 2022 bear market, users have aggressively withdrawn their crypto out of centralized exchanges, which resulted in low liquidity for Bitcoin. True HODLers knew it would take another year before the next halving, so they've decided to go with cold storage and wait for the bear market to subside.

On June 15, BlackRock applied for SEC approval for a spot Bitcoin ETF, sparking renewed interest in this type of investment. The filing prompted other financial firms to resubmit their own applications for similar ETFs. However, the SEC expressed concerns about the lack of detail in BlackRock's proposed surveillance-sharing agreement aimed at preventing fraud and manipulation.

This move prompted other Wall Street asset managers to do the same. However, the SEC has delayed every spot Bitcoin ETF application despite all of them being the same. 

If approved, BlackRock's ETF could significantly impact Bitcoin and cryptocurrency markets, potentially boosting investor confidence and participation. BlackRock, being a global asset management giant, holds substantial influence in the financial world.

In July, news broke out that Tesla had sold 30,000 BTC, or roughly 75% of its holdings, for $936 million. The sale resulted in $64 million profits. At the very least, Tesla has nevertheless held on to its remaining BTC as of Q4 2022 despite the price of Bitcoin sitting at bear-market lows of around $16,000 at the time.

Bitcoin is in a constant growth cycle, and network participants like us can earn more $BTC without too much hassle or technical knowledge, right from the comfort of our homes. 

Learn how to do that in our Bitcoin Mining & Staking guide, which includes the exact steps and best methods of earning more crypto like $BTC in 2024 and beyond.

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A lil' more goodness

Mining and Staking NEAR (NEAR)

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64 min

Mining and Staking Arweave (AR)

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64 min

How to Store, Transfer and Bridge $AR

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64 min

How to Store, Transfer and Bridge $DOGE

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64 min

Mining and Staking Evmos (EVMOS)

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64 min

Summary, History and Status of Harmony (ONE) — 2024 Edition

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64 min

How to Store, Transfer and Bridge $ONE

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64 min

Investing in Astar (ASTR)

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64 min

How to Store, Transfer and Bridge $HBAR

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64 min

Investing in Kava (KAVA)

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64 min

Mining and Staking Waves (WAVES)

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64 min

How to Store, Transfer and Bridge $KAVA

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64 min

Investing in Evmos (EVMOS)

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64 min

Investing in Internet Computer (ICP)

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64 min

Summary, History and Status of BNB Chain (BNB) — 2024 Edition

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64 min

Summary, History and Status of Polygon (MATIC) — 2024 Edition

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64 min

Investing in Dogecoin (DOGE)

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64 min

Mining and Staking Cardano (ADA)

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64 min

How to Store, Transfer and Bridge $LTC

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64 min

How to Store, Transfer and Bridge $MATIC

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64 min

Investing in Ethereum (ETH)

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64 min

Mining and Staking BNB Chain (BNB)

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64 min

How to Store, Transfer and Bridge $BTC

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64 min

How to Store, Transfer and Bridge $ATOM

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64 min

Summary, History and Status of Flow (FLOW) — 2024 Edition

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64 min

How to Store, Transfer and Bridge $ASTR

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64 min

How to Store, Transfer and Bridge $ICP

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64 min

Mining and Staking Internet Computer (ICP)

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64 min

Investing in Arweave (AR)

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64 min

Mining and Staking Flow (FLOW)

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64 min

Summary, History and Status of Hedera (HBAR) — 2024 Edition

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64 min

Investing in Polkadot (DOT)

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64 min

Mining and Staking Bitcoin (BTC)

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64 min

Mining and Staking Polkadot (DOT)

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64 min

Summary, History and Status of TRON (TRX) — 2024 Edition

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64 min

Summary, History and Status of Celo (CELO)

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64 min

Summary, History and Status of Solana (SOL) — 2024 Edition

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64 min

How to Store, Transfer and Bridge $SOL

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64 min

Investing in Helium (HNT)

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64 min

How to Store, Transfer and Bridge $XTZ

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64 min

Summary, History and Status of Stacks (STX) — 2024 Edition

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64 min

Summary, History and Status of Litecoin (LTC)

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64 min

Investing in Celo (CEL)

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64 min

Investing in Litecoin (LTC)

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64 min

Mining and Staking Litecoin (LTC)

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64 min

Investing in Filecoin (FIL)

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64 min

How to Store, Transfer and Bridge $EVMOS

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How to Store, Transfer and Bridge $AURORA

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64 min

Investing in Bitcoin (BTC)

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64 min

Investing in Aurora (AURORA)

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64 min

How to Store, Transfer and Bridge $MINA

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64 min

Mining and Staking Secret (SCRT)

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64 min

Investing in Avalanche (AVAX)

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Summary, History and Status of Avalanche (AVAX) — 2024 Edition

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64 min

How to Store, Transfer and Bridge $GLMR

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64 min

Mining and Staking Kadena (KDA)

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64 min

Summary, History and Status of Astar (ASTR)

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64 min

Summary, History and Status of Polkadot (DOT) — 2024 Edition

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64 min

Investing in Moonbeam (GLMR)

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64 min

Mining and Staking Algorand (ALGO) in 2024

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64 min

Investing in BNB Chain (BNB)

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64 min

Summary, History and Status of Secret (SCRT) — 2024 Edition

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64 min

Investing in Waves (WAVES)

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64 min

Summary, History and Status of NEAR (NEAR) — 2024 Edition

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64 min

How to Store, Transfer and Bridge $NEAR

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64 min

How to Store, Transfer and Bridge $FLOW

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64 min

Investing in Hedera (HBAR)

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64 min

Mining and Staking Dogecoin (DOGE)

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64 min

Investing in Harmony (ONE)

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64 min

How to Store, Transfer and Bridge $ALGO

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64 min

Summary, History and Status of Filecoin (FIL)

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64 min

How to Store, Transfer and Bridge $ETH

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64 min

How to Store, Transfer and Bridge $CEL

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Summary, History and Status of Dogecoin (DOGE) — 2024 Edition

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64 min

How to Store, Transfer and Bridge $HNT

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64 min

Mining and Staking Aurora (AURORA)

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64 min

Mining and Staking Moonbeam (GLMR)

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64 min

Mining and Staking Ethereum (ETH)

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64 min

Mining and Staking Kava (KAVA)

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64 min

Investing in Stacks (STX)

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64 min

Summary, History and Status of Arweave (AR) — 2024 Edition

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64 min

Summary, History and Status of Moonbeam (GLMR) — 2024 Edition

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64 min

Mining and Staking Solana (SOL)

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64 min

Investing in Polygon (MATIC)

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64 min

Mining and Staking Cosmos (ATOM)

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64 min

How to Store, Transfer and Bridge $TRX

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64 min

Investing in Cosmos (ATOM)

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64 min

Mining and Staking Stacks (STX)

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64 min

Summary, History and Status of Mina (MINA) — 2024 Edition

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64 min

Investing in Secret (SCRT)

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64 min

Investing in Solana (SOL)

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64 min

How to Store, Transfer and Bridge $STX

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64 min

Summary, History and Status of Cardano (ADA) — 2024 Edition

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64 min

Summary, History and Status of Ethereum (ETH) — 2024 Edition

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64 min

Investing in Flow (FLOW)

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Mining and Staking Harmony (ONE)

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Investing in Tezos (XTZ)

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How to Store, Transfer and Bridge $AVAX

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How to Store, Transfer and Bridge $DOT

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Summary, History and Status of Aurora (AURORA)

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64 min

Investing in Cardano (ADA)

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64 min

Investing in Algorand (ALGO)

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64 min

Summary, History and Status of Algorand (ALGO)

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64 min

Summary, History and Status of Internet Computer (ICP) — 2024 Edition

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64 min