Bitcoin celebrated its 13th birthday not long ago on January 3rd, and with that has gone through several milestones. This past year it experienced a wild ride of highs and lows. In addition to that, the bitcoins support system grew significantly. It is now the largest cryptocurrency by market value. It is known to work under a peer-to-peer system and investors view this asset as digital gold.
We will now go into eight milestones that bitcoin experienced the past year.
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Market Value Surpassed $1 trillion:
February 19th marked a special day for bitcoin history. Institutional investors and various financial companies such as Tesla, Square, and MicroStrategy started to support crypto in early 2021 leading the asset to this big milestone.
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Morgan Stanley:
The first big U.S bank gave access to bitcoin funds. Its clients have requested access to Bitcoin and they gave exposure to three funds that enable its clients to own this asset.
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El Salvador Passes a Law:
This past June El Salvador passed a law that Bitcoin can be used as a payment for goods and taxes. Being the first country to pass such a law, businesses were also given permission to price their goods in this way.
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Introducing the first futures-based ETF:
October 2021 marked the debut of futures-based Bitcoin ETF in the New York Stock Exchange. The bitcoin futures ETF tracks contracts that bet on the digital asset’s future price rather than the cryptocurrency’s current or “spot” price. As a result, the ETF and bitcoin values aren’t always in sync.
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An All-Time High:
Following the spike in the price of crypto to $3 trillion in November, the asset reached a new high. A high of over $69,044 according to the records of CoinGecko.
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Four Year Bitcoin Upgrade Activated:
Bitcoins’ first major upgrade since 2017 went into effect in November. Taproot came out with Schnorr’s signatures. The signatures help the asset be a more efficient and private platform and aids in the execution of smart contracts.
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Bitcoin Supply Mined:
According to data from Blockchain.com, 90 percent of the total bitcoin supply of 21 million has been mined as of December. The rest won’t be extracted until February 2140, at the earliest. Miners can continue to earn more crypto till then.
Bitcoin works under a proof-of-work system, which implies that miners compete to solve difficult math problems in order to validate transactions. It wasn’t an easy journey to reach 90 percent. The process took a total of 12 years.
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Hashrate Hit a High:
Bitcoins hash rate reached a high of 203.5 ex hashes per second this Sunday. When evaluating the stability of a blockchain, hash rate is an important measure to consider. It refers to the total amount of computer power utilized by miners to create new coins; nevertheless, a greater hash rate indicates that the network is stronger, more secure, and more resistant to attack.
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