2020 in review: What was your most memorable crypto event?

^Source

A year to remember? A year to forget? You’d be right with any of the two. A very weird year it was, probably the most complicated year of our generation, or the century. If you think ‘rainy days’ are intermittent, it rained throughout the year, lol. Well, that wasn’t really funny, but what a year we had!

An eventful year, biggest of its kind yet. 2020 events spread across every sector and every aspect of human life. Very few parameters remained constant throughout the year. The health and financial sectors were unarguably more affected, however, 2020 events spread across the globe. A pandemic, political uproars, economic meltdown; a story about 2020 would make a big book.

Likewise every other sector, the crypto-space got a big bite of the year. An eventful crypto year…once again. What set off like a normal year turned out to be one of the most memorable for cryptocurrency communities. A little flashback takes you down the memory lane. Tons of events, good, bad, worse. I mean, we crossed the $19,000 barrier again! for the first time since the 2017 trip. Well, that was just one out of hundreds of memorable events during the year.

We go through some of these events once again (in no order of importance). Let us which tops the list for you!
Fact is, they are inexhaustible! Do well to add yours in the comment section!

A pandemic-led crash?

.
Cryptocurrency charts looked promising and almost tending towards an explosion before the corona virus pandemic hit hard on the global economy, blowing cryptocurrency values to the dust and hitting the btc/usdt rate well below $4,500 and the total bitcoin market capitalization capsizing below $90 Billion and altcoins following similar trends and posting tangible double digit price crashes up to 50% their initial values. With BTC closing at $6,500 after some price recovery, the month of march was one to forget for cryptocurrency holders, but unarguably created a good opportunity for investors to dive in and buy at lower prices.

^Source

Price instability continued during the month of April as the corona virus scare continued to take its toll on every aspect of human life, cryptocurrency prices however continued on its recovery track, seeing tangible gains and relatively lesser pull-backs as cryptocurrencies once again posted bigger returns than most digital assets including oil. With the series of price gains bitcoin finished off the month of April above $8,500 after posting an over 15% gain on the last day of the month altcoins also saw relative gains over this period of time as the total cryptocurrency market capitalization exceeds $230 billion once again.

Bitcoin and bitcoin cash halving?

The build up to the halving events is always torrid and dramatic with speculations surrounding different aspects of the projects, especially the market movements and reputation of the project as a slash in mining rewards comes with mixed feelings and is viewed from different angles by different interest groups associated with the project.

On may 11, 2020, bitcoin block-rewards were reduced to 6.25, half the initial reward of 12.5BTC.

Arguably the two most controversial cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin Cash (ABC) and Bitcoin SV (BSV) have undergone their respective halving, reducing miners rewards to half its former amount in a move which hopes to increase scarcity and subsequently value. Couple of very popular cryptocurrencies are going to have similar events this year, notably bitcoin; the most popular cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin Cash ABC (BCH) had its halving earlier (APR. 8 2020) with its fellow bitcoin fork bitcoin SV (BSV) following suit about forty-eight (48) hours (APR. 10 2020) later each slashing miners' rewards to 6.25 coins per block from an initial 12.5 coins per block. With this event gone and miners having known their fate, here’s the aftermath and what we learnt from this event.

DeFi boom?

June was a relatively cool month, but just as the saying goes, ‘it is calm before the storm’. In July, DeFi took the grips and the prices of cryptocurrencies backed by DeFi projects went haywire. Loopring, Aave, Akropolis, Reserve protocol and couple of other DeFi projects scored over 5x gains creating a picture of what an actual bull run really looks like. ‘the next bull run will be driven by DeFi’, I guess you heard that a couple of times, but DeFi projects were already having their own bull run as people were over excited with the idea of running certain core financial activities on the blockchain using cryptocurrencies.

^Source
DeFi projects are expanding the scope of financial systems, shifting the paradigm from ‘portable means’ of payments to smart contract applications running independently on a parent blockchain and offering advanced financial services such as insurance, lending, wealth management and an array of other financial management using blockchain resources and exhibiting desired blockchain features such immutability, security, privacy, speed and interoperability.

The 28k trip?

Fourth quarter of the month of July had the bitcoin and ethereum bulls coming back to life as bitcoin gained over $1,000 on July 27, trading above $11,000 while ether’s run of gains placed its value at over $300 sending the total cryptocurrency market capitalization above $300 billion.

^Source

The bull run was teased, but doubts were casted, however these doubts only lasted for a short while as bitcoin and ether saw massive gains on the closing week of July which continued till August as bitcoin crossed the $12,000 boundary and traded a bit above it for a very short time. The $12,000 mark was really a very short one as bitcoin priced crashed bellow $11,000 withing few hours of hitting the $12,000 mark, ether trading a bit above $360 and other altcoins losing their 24hr gains. Price has continued to stay positive in the early days of August. Bitcoin price continued in a steady rise in subsequent months.

PayPal’s venture into cryptocurrency, further institutional investments in crypto and the following media hypes propelled bitcoin price to new highs and supports at record levels. Breaking through barriers, the alpha cryptocurrency journeyed its way to a new all-time high. A trilling event!

Satoshi sold?

Some wallets from the past signed a couple of transactions to transfer a total of about 50 Bitcoins to another unknown address, a transaction which saw the wallet go empty. The reported wallet mined bitcoins in its earliest days, an era known to be championed by the mysterious bitcoin creator(s) Satoshi Nakamoto, dating back to as early as 2009. Prior to these transactions, the wallet has remained dormant with its last transaction dating back to this time (2009) too.

We caught this movement, and even though it might not be at the top of your list of whale transactions, it might be a whale in its real sense making some dolphin transactions. Whatever that was, I’m sure it got the whole oceans rumbling, or maybe I am the only one who trembled? I doubt! Immediately following the news of the transaction is an over seven (7) billion dollars loss in the total cryptocurrency market capitalization, and of course, bitcoin led the way. Another show of the industry’s volatility and panic movements.

Maybe Satoshi Nakamoto just ran out of funds to pay for his/her hide out accommodation in Cuba (don’t just ask me how I knew!), or he just made a charitable donations to the frontliners in the fight against the Corona virus pandemic, probably it’s not him but just some ‘early bitcoiner’. Most analysis have been centered on possible proofs that Satoshi didn’t sign this transaction. But one thing is for sure, this wallet is from bitcoin’s earliest days, and the past actually has many questions to answer about the old. So here’s the big question, What if Satoshi Nakamoto actually sent those bitcoins?

PayPal goes crypto?

Bitcoin took a huge leap and blazed through $12, 000 and had its sight set on $13,000 with the news of getting listed on the world’s most reputable international money transfer service, PayPal. Well, that should have come earlier in my opinion.

^Source

Better late than never! PayPal announced it is launching a service that will enable customers buy, hold and sell cryptocurrency directly from their PayPal accounts. A move which is set to introduce cryptocurrency to its over 340 million users and 25 million merchants. Listing first on its new cryptocurrency service, PayPal is opening this service for Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin cash (ABC) and Litecoin.
Considering the huge number of users who are still new to the concept of cryptocurrency, PayPal is also launching a cryptocurrency education program to educate new users on cryptocurrency and blockchain technology as the platform welcomes this very pleasant development.

Syntropy’s heroics?

Syntropy (formerly NOIA network) is building a programmable internet. Simply put, a programmable internet is an interactive internet which solves the routing issue by selecting the most efficient route for data transfer; the most efficient route is the least crowded route. Syntropy combines the concept of a Software Defined Network (SDN), Segment Routing (SR) and the developing Internet protocol V6 (IPV6) to build a programmable internet which selects least crowded route in contrast to the currently used Border Gateway protocol which selects the shortest route. Sending data via the least crowded route ensure a more efficient transfer as data transfer is done with ease hence solving the internet latency issue.

Syntropy utilizes the blockchain technology (a distributed ledger system which serves as an immutable store of data) to keep a visible statistics of available routes in the network, nodes (a collection of data blocks) on the network serves as data transfer routes and with thousands of nodes always active on the Syntropy network, users are always presented with various routes through which data could be sent on the network, the segmented routing and IPv6 which forms part of Syntropy’s programmable internet technology selects the most efficient route for this data transfer.

Pascal’s block-reward halving and Version 6 upgrade?

No pun intended but seems everything is splitting into halves this year.
Pascal blockchain has also completed its second block rewards halving. The high-tech blockchain have scheduled its halving to occur after every 210,240 blocks. If that sounds strange, now here’s it; after each 210,240 blocks mined on the pascal blockchain, the block reward is reduced to half the former amount. On 2nd May, Pascal recorded the 420,480th block mined on its blockchain and completed the block reward halving. Halving? Yikes!, maybe a nightmare for miners, but good for the economy. Just as the saying goes Create scarcity, drive value.

Months later and after developer proposals and community deliberations, Pascal coin has announced plans to commence its upgrade to Version 6. While version 5 still remains the biggest technological upgrade, version 6 is the most exciting upgrade yet. The version 6 upgrade features developments which tackles usability issues and further advances the pascal blockchain technologically while making it easier and more convenient to use.

Ethereum 2.0?

^Source

The upgrade to ethereum 2.0 also known as SERENITY is expected to bring moment-defining changes to the ethereum ecosystem. This upgrade changes Ethereum’s consensus algorithm to proof of stake. Time to shut down the mine guys! The upgrade to 2.0 hopes to add flexibility to the ethereum blockchain and solve its long-lasting issues. After the reaching a required number of stakes, ethereum 2.0 launched and the staking algorithm was set to function immediately. Staking ethereum tokens on supported platforms earns users ethereum tokens as specified by the algorithm.

Blockchain-powered digital Yuan?

Cryptocurrency projects backed by the government were before now, a mere illusion. Government support is what many predict to be the event which will revolutionize the idea of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology and usher in an era of mainstream cryptocurrency use.

The Chinese government is rumored to be working on a digital currency in the hopes of replacing their paper currency with a more digital and sophisticated currency. By utilizing blockchain technology it hopes to create a digital form of its official currency—Yuan. With progress being made, the Chinese digital Yuan shows how a government-owned cryptocurrency could be run.

Crypto-targeted twitter hack?

For the first time in history the big names got to tweet something about bitcoin. Alright, I know Elon Musk has been pro-crypto from the first day and he surely owns a huge bag of Dogecoins, and a host of other billionaires out there owns a good stack of bitcoins, but having tweets about bitcoin on their social media handles with countless millions of mainstream followers? Euphoric! I can say we made it huge out there.

Following a ‘well planned’ twitter hack targeted at cryptocurrency community, tweets from reputable twitter accounts saw cryptocurrency holders lose tangible amounts of bitcoins to a fake giveaway scam. The most popular of its kind. Despite this being a very popular cryptocurrency scam, the twitter glitch allowed perpetrators utilize the most reputable profiles for this exercise.

UNISWAP Stimulus?

Ethereum based cryptocurrency swap protocol launched its toke UNI. Highlight of this event is the distribution of 400 UNI tokens to current users of its facility.
My normal idea (and probably yours too) of an airdrop is a 2$-200$ incentive to promote cryptocurrency projects, especially ones new to the crypto space. If this is your idea of an airdrop too, then I guess it changed a couple of days ago. Mine did, of course! New and existing projects will have to think of a better way to attract users, not sure if those 50$ airdrops are attractive anymore…lol.

^Source

The US government’s COVID relief fund was about 1200$, Trump might want to ask the guys at UNISWAP how best to do it! Uhm, Trumps relief fund reached a greater number of people though, and if you sold off your UNI tokens at $3, then you just got the exact amount Donald dished out to his citizens.

Too mention a few! Lots of mind-blowing events. Let us know which one mattered most to you!