Bitcoin’s 2020: The Rise Of Certainty

2020 was unforgettable, especially for Bitcoin. To help memorialize this year for our readers, we asked our network of contributors to reflect on Bitcoin’s price action, technological development, community growth and more in 2020, and to reflect on what all of this might mean for 2021. These writers responded with a collection of thoughtful and thought-provoking articles. Click here to read all of the stories from our End Of Year 2020 Series.

In a year overflowing with chaos throughout the world, Bitcoin continued to function flawlessly and give precisely zero fucks about what the rest of the world was doing. And, in doing so, Bitcoin’s predictability has contrasted sharply with the world as a signal of truth in a rising sea of both actual and manufactured chaos. 

It was a constant, simple beacon of certainty.

Throughout 2020, Bitcoin has grown, evolved, strengthened and, most importantly, all of these developments in aggregate have increased the certainty of bitcoin’s eventual form as a global reserve asset. 

Core to my own view of Bitcoin is that the certainty of Bitcoin’s eventual end-state is far more important than timelines; the scope and scale and importance of what is being built and emerging in front of our eyes must not fail, so consequently should not be compromised by the impatient.

From this framing, let’s explore a few of the strands of Bitcoin’s rising certainty.

Developer Funding

While 2019 saw some excellent articles highlighting the perennial issue of insufficient funding for Bitcoin developers, 2020 saw the emergence of five more initiatives that acquired and supplied additional funding for Bitcoin developers. 

BitMEX Research summarized its current state earlier in the year in this excellent article and subsequently, we saw these other efforts emerge:

These new initiatives built on top of those Bitcoiners who quietly and privately support developers who they know, and on top of the many good actors in the space who recognize that supporting the foundational strength of bitcoin is actually critical to their businesses.

The longer that HODLers retain their bitcoin, the more discretionary purchasing power they will control. I am very hopeful that many bitcoiners will, through some of the mechanisms that now exist, support bitcoin developers. I was delighted to support several devs on the Bitcoin Devs List in a small way as I have been able to recently. Take a look if you’d like to make a small but material difference too.

Helping the developers who build and maintain Bitcoin is a foundational piece in Bitcoin’s certainty.

The Third Bitcoin Halving In May

For those new to Bitcoin, “the Halving” is the reduction in the bitcoin emission rate — the block subsidy that occurs every 210,000 blocks, which is roughly every four years. In May of this year, that 10-minute block reward reduced from 12.5 bitcoin to 6.25 — a new rate of 900 BTC per day. 

So with a static demand for bitcoins, and a halving of…