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Ten Years of Blockchain History (five-minute quick version)

This is the Consensy version of a quick overview of the ten-year history of the blockchain. If you have a certain foundation in cryptocurrency and are not familiar with the history of cryptocurrency, you can take a look at this simple overview, which can bring you more history Big picture.

The first transaction ever made on the Bitcoin network took place in December 2009.
year 2010
February — The first cryptocurrency exchange, Bitcoin Market, is established. The first transaction took place a month later.
April—The first public transaction of Bitcoin: the price is 0.03USD / 1BTC
May — The first real-world Bitcoin transaction is made by Laszlo Hanyecz, who buys two Papa John's pizzas for 10,000 BTC (about $25)
June — Bitcoin developer Gavin Andreson creates an airdrop campaign offering 5 free BTC to the public.
July - The word blockchain starts popping up on the BitcoinTalk forum. Before that, it was called a "proof-of-work chain"
July - Bitcoin exchange called Magic The Gathering Online eXchange, also known as Mt. Gox, established
August — Bitcoin protocol error leads to emergency fork

December — Satoshi Nakamoto stops communicating with the world
year 2011
January - A quarter of the 21 million bitcoins mined
February — Bitcoin hits $1 for the first time
April — Bitcoin parity with Euro and British Pound
June — WikiLeaks begins accepting bitcoin donations
June - Mt. Gox is hacked, trading is suspended and Bitcoin price drops sharply
August — First Bitcoin Improvement Proposal: BIP Purpose and Guidelines
December — Bitcoin appears on "The Good Wife" episode, watched by 9.45 million viewers.

2012
2012
May - Bitcoin Magazine, founded by Mihai Alisie and Vitalik Buterin, publishes its first issue
July - Estonian government begins work to incorporate blockchain into digital IDs
September - Bitcoin Foundation established
September — Coinbase raises over $600,000 in funding
November — First Bitcoin Halving to 25 BTC per block

year 2013
year 2013
February - Reddit begins accepting Bitcoin payments for Gold members
March - Cyprus government bailout charges over $100,000 to bank accounts, causing Bitcoin price to surge.
May — 11 million bitcoins in circulation with a total bitcoin value of over $1 billion
May - First cryptocurrency market crash, price goes from $13 to $220, then down to $70
June - First major cryptocurrency theft. 25,000 BTC Stolen From Bitcoin Forum Founder
July - Mastercoin becomes the first project to conduct an ICO
August - U.S. federal court issues opinion that Bitcoin is a currency or form of money
October — FBI shuts down dark web marketplace Silk Road, confiscating approximately 26,000 Bitcoins
October — First Bitcoin ATM opens at Waves Coffee in Vancouver
November — Vitalik Buterin publishes the Ethereum whitepaper: "The Next Generation Smart Contract and Decentralized Application Platform"
November—Bitmain announced the release of S1 Miner
November — Bitcoin breaks through $1,000
November - US Senate holds first hearing on Bitcoin
December — First commit to the Ethereum codebase

December - Chinese authorities revert to their stance on Bitcoin, declaring it is not a currency.
Year 2014
January — Vitalik Buterin announces the Ethereum project at the North American Bitcoin Conference in Miami
February - UK's HMRC classifies Bitcoin as a private asset
February - Major DDoS attacks against three major exchanges: Gox, Bitstamp and BTC-e
February - Mentougou goes offline, goes bankrupt, and the whereabouts of over 850,000 BTC are unknown.
March: IRS Provides Guidance to Treat Virtual Currencies as Property for U.S. Tax Purposes
March - Credit card processor Stripe begins accepting Bitcoin
March - Newsweek claims Dorian Nakamoto is the creator of Bitcoin
April — Gavin Wood publishes the Ethereum Yellow Paper: "Ethereum: A Secure Decentralized Generalized Transaction Ledger"
June — Ethereum Foundation established in Zug, Switzerland
June — The U.S. Marshals Service auctions off 30,000 Bitcoins confiscated from Silk Road. All purchased by venture capitalist Tim Draper
July - Ethereum token offering raised 31,591 BTC ($18,439,086) in 42 days
July - BitUSD, the first stablecoin launched by BitShares
September - TeraExchange launches the first CFTC-approved Bitcoin OTC swap
October — ConsenSys is founded by Joe Lubin

December — Paypal, Zynga, Overstock.com, Expedia, Newegg, Dell, Dish Network, and Microsoft all accept bitcoin payments
2015
January — Coinbase opens the first U.S. cryptocurrency exchange
February — Stripe launches Bitcoin payments integration for merchants
April — Nasdaq launches blockchain trials
June — NYDFS publishes the final version of its BitLicense virtual currency regulations
July — Frontier, Ethereum's first live mainnet release, launches.
August — Augur, the first ICO on the Ethereum network
September - R3 consortium of 3 financial institutions grows to over 40 members in six months
October - Gemini exchange, founded by twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, launches
October - Bitcoin is featured on the cover of The Economist
November — Announcing the first zero-knowledge proof ZK-Snarks
November—Proposed ERC-20 token standard
December—Linux Foundation establishes Hyperledger project

December — Pieter Wuille publishes "Segregated Witness and Its Implications for Scalability" (SegWit)

2016
2016
January — Joseph Poon and Thaddeus Dryja publish "The Bitcoin Lightning Network: Scalable On-Chain Instant Payments"
January — Zcash announced
February — The Linux Foundation announces the HyperLedger project with 30 founding members
March - Blockchain and cryptocurrencies feature prominently in Chinese government's five-year plan
March - Homestead, the second Ethereum mainnet version, is launched.
April - The DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) launches a 28-day crowdsale. A month later, it raised over $150 million worth of ether
May—China Financial Blockchain Shenzhen Alliance launched with 31 members
June - The DAO is attacked, 3.6 million of the 11.5 million ether in the DAO are stolen in the attack
July — The DAO attack causes the Ethereum blockchain to hard fork to recover funds. The few community members who rejected the hard fork continued to use the original blockchain as the Ethereum Classic (ETC) blockchain
July — Second Bitcoin Halving to 12.5BTC per block

November—CME Group publishes Bitcoin Price Index
2017
January — Bitcoin price tops $1,000 for first time in three years
February - Enterprise Ethereum Alliance formed with 30 founding members, surpassing 150 members six months later
March - SEC rejects multiple applications for Bitcoin ETF
April - Bitcoin is officially recognized as a currency by Japan
June — EOS kicks off a year-long ICO, ultimately raising $4 billion
July — Parity exposes weaknesses in multi-signature wallets
August—BTC forks, forks out of Bitcoin Cash
October — Ethereum releases Byzantium soft fork network upgrade, part of Metropolis
September - China bans ICOs (94)
September — $1 million locked in decentralized finance applications
October — Bitcoin price surpasses $5,000 for the first time
October — CME Group announces Bitcoin futures
November — Bitcoin price surpasses $10,000 for the first time
November — Segwit2X is canceled after receiving attention from the Bitcoin community
November—Devcon3 ramps up capacity twice to meet developer demand
December - CBOE Bitcoin futures launch
December — Bitcoin price hits $20,000
December - Lightning Network Protocol 1.0 released
December — Cryptokitties, the popular Ethereum Dapp, pushes the Ethereum network to its limit
December — MakerDAO launches DAI, signaling the future of decentralized finance
December — 435 successful ICOs raised a combined total of over $5.6 billion in 2017

2018
2018
January - Switzerland begins accepting Bitcoin for tax payments
January - 80% of all Bitcoins have been mined
January — Ethereum price peaks near $1,400
January — Total cryptocurrency market capitalization peaks at over $800 billion
January - Facebook bans all cryptocurrency-related ads
March - Google bans all cryptocurrency-related ads
March - Twitter bans all cryptocurrency-related ads
April — 2018 surpasses 2017 in funding raised in the first four months, with $6.3 billion raised
April — EU government pledges $300 million to develop blockchain projects
April — Market surpasses 1,500 more cryptocurrencies with a combined market capitalization of $43 million
June — The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) states that ether is not a security.
July - Over 100,000 ERC20 tokens created
August - NYSE owner announces federally regulated digital asset exchange Bakkt
August - Monetary Authority of Singapore launches Project Ubin to demonstrate Ethereum's use case for interbank settlements
October - Fidelity launches cryptocurrency institutional platform
November - Bitcoin Cash hard forks to BCH ABC and BCH SV

2019
2019
February — Ethereum’s Constantinople hard fork is released, the second part of Metropolis
April - Total Bitcoin transaction volume exceeds 400 million
June — Ethereum daily transaction volume exceeds 1 million
June - Facebook announces Libra
July - The U.S. Senate holds a hearing titled "Review of the Digital Currency and Blockchain Regulatory Framework"
October — Block.One fined $24 million by SEC for unregulated $4 billion EOS ICO
November — The amount of Ether locked in decentralized finance applications hits an all-time high of 2.7 million ETH.

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Jason Choi on Synthetix

Jason Choi from TheSpartanGroup and TheBlockcrunch talked about the recent performance and views of the DeFi project synthetix.

A lot of people have been asking about synthetix price performance lately. Some thoughts on its token demand + supply imbalance:

It first came to my attention when it started to climb (quickly) on defipulse. Over 80% of $SNX holders have staked their tokens into synthetic assets, primarily synthetic USD and Ethereum. This is a very impressive percentage of actual token usage.

How it works: Users combine large amounts of synthetic assets with SNX collateral and then trade them by converting them into other synthetic assets. For example, if 50% of the fund pool is used to support sBTC and the other 50% sUSD is used to increase the price of BTC, the benefits of sBTC holders will be socialized among sUSD minters.

How it led to a 16x increase since May. A few decisions, whether intentional or accidental, helped the team tie usage of their platform to price growth: 1) High ratio + single collateral 2) High inflation rewards 3) Collateral interest 5) Speculative use cases 6) Exchange float

The open question is, will transaction volume increase enough to incentivize staking with transaction fees when rewards inevitably decline and this year’s rewards unlock?

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2019 was the year of DeFi (and why 2020 will be too)

In the blockchain story, each year can be distilled into an overarching trend. The story of 2009 was Bitcoin. In 2015, Ethereum. 2017 brought ICOs. The answer in 2019 is obvious: the decentralized finance movement is by far one of the most impactful trends in the cryptocurrency and blockchain ecosystem.
Standards for an Open Financial Economy
– A properly functioning financial system contains globally efficient markets that allow:
– Ability of borrowers and lenders to transfer capital
– Exchange and transaction (i.e. derivatives) process with necessary liquidity
– Means for individuals/investors to transfer, preserve, raise and distribute capital
– Ability to offset and manage risk

– and provide regulatory protection for investors and individuals

I will not provide the author’s description of how powerful and developed Defi is in 2019, but directly provide his outlook on Defi in 2020:
Outlook 2020

Clearly, Ethereum has established itself as the basis for a new financial economy. In 2020, new and existing companies will build on the lending protocol, which will increase efficiency and develop new products.

Coinbase and Binance will continue to expand rapidly through acquisitions and product launches. Decentralized exchanges will hopefully become easier for regular users and even mobile native users.

Synthetic assets and new derivatives will proliferate, creating tens of millions of dollars in value by 2020, and eventually billions of dollars in value. Some will suck, while others will be novel. The continuous development of new financial products and tools will bring more liquidity and potential profits to investors.

The open financial system based on Ethereum is interoperable, programmable and composable, laying the foundation for a new financial economy. However, keep in mind that this movement is not just about jettisoning the old financial system, but integrating with the current one where possible and creating it where necessary. The new financial system must work for everyone, not just those already initiated by cryptocurrencies. Finally, building a new financial system will take time. While 2019 saw significant progress in the development of decentralized finance, 2020 will take a leap forward.

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Is the halving story okay: Litecoin's post-halving plunge

Messari's report is mainly a warning, the halving effect of Litecoin is no good! And now a lot of hope in the currency circle is placed on the halving of Bitcoin. Will the failure of Litecoin's pioneering role lead to the failure of the story of Bitcoin?

The current Bitcoin block reward is 12.5 BTC per block. Around May 2020, when Bitcoin will hit its 630,000th block, the block reward will be cut in half to 6.25 BTC per block.

The story tells us this could fuel the next Bitcoin bull run. In theory, there would be less selling pressure from miners selling bitcoin to pay fiat fees. Additionally, reduced block rewards will reinforce Bitcoin’s scarcity. After the 2020 halving, Bitcoin's inflation rate will drop to 1.8%, although historical data is limited, since there have only been two Bitcoin halvings to date, each of Bitcoin's previous two halvings After that, there were amazing bull markets.

After all the hype surrounding Litecoin's halving, it now finds itself in an interesting position. The hash rate is now at the level it was in January, while the price is exactly 2x what it was at the beginning of the year. Block rewards halved, price doubled, hash rate unchanged... perhaps Litecoin's hash rate has found a local bottom?

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Ethereum 2.0 Information Encyclopedia

This is a comprehensive summary of Ethereum 2.0 information.