10 years in Crypto: A short history from my beginnings to now

One decade ago, I signed up for an account on Bitcointalk and chatted with many like minded people about how cool this new thing called Bitcoin was. It was only a few years old at this point, with a block reward of 50 BTC at the time. GPU miners just started showing up, and ASICS were just around the corner. I joked with a co-worker of mine, if Bitcoin went over $2000 that would blow my mind... Oh man, I had no idea what was coming.

Shortly into my adventure into Bitcoin, the network experienced its first catastrophic hard fork that same year. This was caused by an oversight in the code and it caused the bitcoin network to split into two! Maybe more. Miners started building blocks on both chains, causing major havoc. And something needed to be done.

I just signed a transaction on the network shortly before, and was terrified I lost my funds forever. But the problem was quickly solved and no loss of funds occurred during these early days of decentralized finance.

You can read more about it in the below article:

https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2015/07/28/analyzing-the-2013-bitcoin-fork-centralized-decision-making-saved-the-day/

For my first year in Crypto, I would go to Mt Gox to check the price of BTC.. As there was no Coinmarketcap at the time their charts started in 2014.

Below are some charts showing a decade in crypto. I hovered my cursor over my approximate start date in crypto and it shows a vertical line along with data in the upper left corner of the charts.

Back then: 40,000 daily unique addresses transacting Bitcoin
Now: Over 500,000 upwards of 700,000 depending on the date.

Double spends were a concern back then, and at the time we joked the FBI/CIA or whatever agency could easily 51% attack the network as it was so small at the time. But now this is impossible, as the Bitcoin network is the single most large distributed computing network on the planet.

Back then: 32 Terrahashes
Now: 359.56M TH (That is 359 Million Terrahashes)

Back then: Price per BTC was $44
Now: $23,728.0 with all time highs of around $65,000

Looking back it was truly amazing, and the charts look just as impressive. I would like to share a couple charts showing from where I started to where we are now in regards to growth.

The block size debate

Later on Bitcoin was pushing up against its 1MB block size with so much growth. I remember the miners signaling in what direction to go with a hard fork to fix this issue. This was some of the first consensus based on the miners for changes to the bitcoin network. Along with BIPS made a long the way. But this change was huge.. and the cause of forks such as Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin SV and such..

Back then: 194 Kilobytes per block
Now: 700 Kilobytes per block and upwards to 1MB.

I stuck with BTC and glad I did, segwit has helped Bitcoin with transfer limitations. And I think with the Lightning network that will be the next evolution of doing transfers on the blockchain, by use of side chains.

Finding altcoins that address transaction volume concerns:

Always being interested into altcoins, I saw the problem BTC was having with large volumes of transactions. This was before the lightning network, and segwit seemed like a band aid fix to the network. So my search for a good altcoin started. At the time I found Darkcoin (now known as Dash). I would post in the Altcoin announcement thread and try out their release candidates released by Evan Duffield. Though I never got a Darkcoin/Dash masternode at the time in the mid 2010s it was the thing to have. But honestly looking back now, glad I did not get one. As I feel Dash has not progressed well as a privacy coin. They also had a very large pre-mine and hold many of the Dash tokens (or did at the time). This made me frown and I did not like what I saw. Now I support newer generation privacy coins using ZK-Snarks such as Horizen (ZEN).

Ethereum and the DigixDAO hack

Did you know that the Ethereum blockchain has rolled back transactions in the past? They would probably like you to forget about that. This is why Ethereum Classic excists. One of the first smart contracts back in 2016 was exploited and drained of funds. The blockchain was halted, and when it came back online the funds were restored. Many were shocked that a roll back occurred.. As it has never happened on the BTC network. And something to consider with any altcoin, even what is considered one of the best (Ethereum) has rolled back transactions. And it sets the president for them to do it again if they decide. This event was of the major reasons I never heavily invested into ETH..

Delegated proof of stake altcoins:

During my altcoin sweetheart search I vetted many coins, and one stuck out at the time as quite interesting.. It was Steem and my journey into Delegated proof of Stake networks began in 2017. Amazing to see the community in action, and I will never forget the early days. I always knew about Steemit Inc's large mined stake, and All of us have moved to Hive now, and I continue to be amazed by the technology on this blockchain and all the great people that are a part of it. With Steemit inc stake removed with the fork to Hive I feel like this is a much better home and makes it more decentralized without foundation ninja mines hiding the background.

Fast forward to 2023, and wow.. Just wow that is all I have to say. The growth shown in the charts is amazing, the parabolic growth is quite evident. And honestly I think it will keep growing very fast. I am in it for the long term, and I think we can look back at these stats from 2023 in 2033 and say again.. wow look how far we have come. I hope to find this post on the Hive blockchain in a decade so I can enjoy another decade of growth for Bitcoin, and all cryptos in the blockchain realm.

I think many great altcoins will keep growing, filling in the gaps of where Bitcoin is not really suited for. As for transfer of wealth I think Bitcoin will stay king. But as for many niche blockchain operations such as social media I do believe Hive has a strong upper hand in those TX operations. Along with a strong community of content creators, curators and developers I think we are in the growth stage as @enforcer48 says constantly. But I am patient and now a great thing when I see one, just like Bitcoin back in the day.. Look how far its come.. and the same will happen to the good altcoins out there.

Privacy coins will also have a place in the crypto realm, seeing how we have gone from Coinjoin using BTC technology, to Cryptonight (now randomx) and finally ZK-Snarks I think these coins will have a place for those who want the ability to transact privately.

So here we are into early 2023, in another crypto bear market.. I look forward to the next halving of the block reward helping to kick start the next bull run, as that is how it has worked in the past. And I believe it will keep working that way. I suggest keeping an eye on the halving date, and shortly after it occurs the price tends to trend upwards as miner selling pressure halves. This tends to cause altcoins to rise in price as well depending on the BTC dominance at the time.

Halving > Price rise > Hash rate rise > Stronger network > Repeat in 4 years.

I think this cycle will continue over and over for many decades to come.

https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/bitcoin/bitcoin-halving

So in 2024 I think we should see some major action again.. But until then just look how far we have come! I am more than happy with the decade of growth to where we are now.

Posted with STEMGeeks