Summary
2020 can be said to be an extremely extraordinary year. With the huge impact it has brought us, 2020 will surely go down in history as one of the busiest years in the crypto field.
Of course, it’s often hard to remember what you had for breakfast this morning, let alone what happened in a busy year. Don’t worry, we’ve collected the most important crypto events that happened in the year for you in this article!
The “Black Thursday” crash triggered by the coronavirus pandemic
The global spread of the novel coronavirus and subsequent lockdowns is undoubtedly the most significant event of 2020. As a result of this black swan event, nearly every financial market in the world has experienced unprecedented volatility and extraordinary market crashes.
Although Bitcoin had been doing relatively well for a while before this, its inevitable March 12, 2020, was a day that would become a nightmare for most cryptocurrency HODLers.
Bitcoin dropped 50% in a single day as the financial markets panicked.
Under the impact of the new crown epidemic, Bitcoin has collapsed.
The good news is that just nine months later, Bitcoin has reached a new all-time high! The 2020 cryptocurrency market has forged a group of true survivors.
Bitcoin halving event in 2020
The Bitcoin halving may be the most unexpected event of 2020, shocking almost the entire cryptocurrency world. The Bitcoin halving is a known event that occurs every 210,000 blocks produced, with a cycle of about four years.
As part of Bitcoin’s issuance schedule, miners are rewarded every time a new block is produced. A Bitcoin halving is when the reward for miners is cut in half. If you want to learn more about how the process works, check out our overview of Bitcoin mining.
Bitcoin halving is not only a well-known event, but also a great celebration of Satoshi Nakamoto’s invention and ingenious design of Bitcoin. The most recent Bitcoin halving took place on May 11, 2020. Since then, the reward miners receive from each block has changed from 12.5 BTC to 6.25 BTC.
So, when is the next Bitcoin halving? It’s just around the corner! Welcome to read our Bitcoin halving countdown. Bitcoin halving in 2024!
Let’s start farming in the “DeFi summer”!
It can be said that decentralized finance (DeFi) has attracted widespread attention in 2020. Nowadays, many people also call the summer of 2020 the "DeFi Summer."
Others attribute the start of this DeFi boom to Compound Finance’s liquidity mining. Just a few weeks later, yield farms were born! In the summer of 2020, we can see a lot of phenomena in DeFi, such as our endless farming, the constant forking of tokens named after food, the crazy access to certain functions in the MetaMask wallet, and the emergence of many vulnerability exploits and fraud tools.
But despite its odd appearance, DeFi is clearly here to stay. Automated market makers (AMMs) like Uniswap and Curve are printing hundreds of millions of dollars in volume every day. Look at the surge in the number of DEXs this year.
Meanwhile, decentralized lending protocols like Aave and Compound have billions of dollars locked in contracts, and yield farmers like Yearn are working on new liquidity mining.
As one of the rapidly changing fields of crypto technology, DeFi will undoubtedly have a bright future in 2021 and beyond.
Institutional entry into Bitcoin
I don’t know if you have noticed that “institutional entry” has become a reality this year!
Bitcoin's share has soared in the asset allocation of listed companies. As of December 2020, one company, MicroStrategy, has purchased 70,000 BTC worth more than $1.8 billion. Under this trend, Bitcoin has the potential to become a legitimate macro asset to which large institutions can allocate part of their funds, and this trend will continue.
Oh, and MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor also reads Binance Academy regularly! Don’t believe it? Check out his interview with Binance CEO CZ.
➟ Start your crypto journey by buying Bitcoin on Binance!
The launch of Ethereum 2.0
Ethereum 2.0 has been a long time coming. It is a series of upgrades to the leading smart contract platform that are expected to be rolled out over the next few years. Most notably, these include the switch from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS), sharding, and many other upgrades to improve the network’s scalability.
The upgrade was rolled out in multiple phases. Phase 0, the release of the beacon chain, and staking began this year. As of December 2020, more than $1 billion worth of ETH has been locked in the Eth2 deposit contract, which shows the huge interest of users in Eth2 staking.
If you decide to stake ETH and don’t care about the specific technical details, please visit Binance’s ETH2.0 staking service.
Ethereum will continue to move forward with the upcoming Eth2 upgrade, layer 2 solutions like Optimistic Rollups, and EIP-1559, a major upgrade to the current gas system.
Bitcoin hits new all-time high (ATH)
It’s no secret that despite the enormous damage the coronavirus has done to the world, it could accelerate the adoption of crypto. There has been a huge increase in public interest in economic policy, the idea of sound money, remote work, and the continued shift of our economic activity to the digital realm. These processes have been developing for some time, but in 2020, the coronavirus pandemic has forced them to accelerate.
The trends described above have greatly strengthened the demand for Bitcoin’s use as a store of value, digital gold, or simply cash. Regardless of where we attribute the price action, Bitcoin broke its previous all-time high on November 30, 2020. Then, after a brief pullback, it surpassed that level again and without even taking a breath, continued to rise further by thousands of dollars.
Where will the next market top be? It’s anyone’s guess, but we can be sure that Bitcoin will enter a new phase of development in 2021.
Summarize
Well, there were many other events in 2020 that we may not have described one by one. Anyway, 2020 has passed with its ups and downs. I hope all of us can be a little more relaxed in 2021! We will always be here to create the future of value transfer on the Internet.
We’re glad that you supported Binance Academy in 2020, and we look forward to seeing you better in 2021!
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