Satoshi Nakamoto, a name that is equally famous and infamous at the same time. It was starting of the year 2009 when he published a white paper and officially released BITCOIN. Although it was not the first cryptocurrency unlike eCash (developed by Digicash), this was the one which brought on the fintech revolution across the world.
The very next year, in 2010, he handed over the project to the community by making it open source.
Since then it has seen highs and lows but maintained to survive in the market to retain the title of “Oldest Surviving Currency”.
But the concern is, until when? When will it fall? What would be its future? To find all these answers, let’s dig in.
What development has Bitcoin made?
In his 9-page white paper, Nakamoto started with the title “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”. The heading itself says a lot about the purpose behind its development. As an organisation, it has innovated as-
- Control against fraud
In 2022, cryptocurrency worth 2 Billion USD has already been stolen by hackers. BTC also have a good share of loss in the same. Hence the company focus on a high level of security to protect its user from frauds like chargebacks. It also provides hardware wallet support which makes it even more difficult to steal or lose.
- Cost Efficiency
The direct contact between the sender and receiver eliminates the middlemen’s time and cost which makes it more cost-efficient to trade with. It looks forward to reducing poverty by cutting the transaction charge on workers’ salaries.
- Multi-signature accounts
Multi-signature allows a transaction to be accepted by the network only if a certain number of a defined group of persons agree to sign the transaction. This has enhanced the functionality of BTC and expanded its reach further to firms where payment is approved by a board of members.
Bitcoin Roadmap
The company witnessed a great journey in its history of 13 years.
- The Whitepaper – Oct 2008
Satoshi Nakamoto published the Bitcoin Whitepaper.
- Genesis Block – Jan 2009
The genesis block(Block 0) is the first block upon which the rest of the blocks are added. In Jan 2009, the genesis block of Bitcoin was mined
- M-of-N Standard Transaction- Oct 2011
Bitcoin Improvement Proposal numbered 011 (BIP 011) facilitates secured wallets, escrow transactions, and multiple signature payment use cases.
- Pay to Script Hash- Jan 2012
BIP 016 implemented a new standard for the BTC scripting system and added new rules that were applicable only to new transactions
- Hierarchical Deterministic Wallets- Feb 2012
BIP 032 introduced HD Wallets which allow for multiple cryptocurrency wallets to be generated from a single seed phrase.
- A Finite Supply for Bitcoin- April 2014
BIP 042 introduced a finite supply of Bitcoin after identifying the bug that would result in an infinite volume of bitcoin.
- SegWit- Aug 2017
BIP 148 proposed a transaction format where the witness information would be removed from the input field of the block.
- Taproot- Jan 2020
BIP 341 is considered the most revolutionary BIP to date and we will know why in the next section.
Bitcoin Upgrades
As the market is growing, there is a growth in competition every day. To sustain the competition like all the other cryptocurrencies, bitcoin too has regular upgrades. Upgrades are a way of enforcing new features in any cryptocurrency protocol. The most recent upgrade from bitcoin is Taproot Upgrade.
Taproot Upgrade
Earlier, the verification of bitcoin transactions was comparatively slow as each digital signature was validated against a public key. The time was directly proportional to the number of inputs and signatures in the case of multi-signature transactions.
To resolve this problem, the Taproot upgrade allows multiple signatures and transactions to be batched together. This reduced the latency drastically and became a revolutionary bitcoin upgrade. A team of Pieter Wuille, Jonas Nick, Tim Ruffing and Anthony Towns developed the Taproot.
Now talking about the relationship between the market and bitcoin, it has been a roller coaster ride and for the same reason, famous market enthusiasts fear its end be soon.
Is fluctuating market would result in the end of Bitcoin?
Chakib Bouda(CTO, Rambus- a payment firm) said, “We expect in 10 years time, bitcoin will become mainstream and have a remarkably different reputation. ”
There is a clear division among crypto enthusiasts on the future of bitcoin due to the fluctuation seen in the previous 2 years. However, the arguments in favour of the survival of bitcoin sound more reasonable.
- Since the launch of bitcoin in 2009, it has been almost a decade. In just one decade, cryptocurrency has gained a market of 2.02 Trillion USD, greater than the economy of many countries and the credit of the revolution still goes to bitcoin. It is predicted that the market would gain a worth of almost 5 Trillion USD by 2030. Imagining such a huge market without Bitcoin is unfair and quite far from reality.
- Seeing the potential in the market many big firms already have invested in bitcoin even after the collapse. Paypal has brought crypto custodian Curv, whereas, on the other hand, Tesla bought bitcoin worth 1.5 Billion USD.
Expected Future of Bitcoin
Bitcoin is the most headline-seeking cryptocurrency of all time whether it comes to its illicit use, its controversial rise, its uncertain future and its power to collapse and lift the market.
But the following are some predictions made by various statistical agencies over the future of Bitcoin:
- On reading the trendlines of waves of Bitcoin prices, it is predicted to cross the mark of 1 million USD per bitcoin by the end of 2030.
- Looking at the 295 Million cryptocurrency users in 2022, the prediction is being made for 1 Billion crypto users by 2030. If we consider the market share of Bitcoin users, there would be more than 300-400 Million users of Bitcoin by 2030.
- In 2022, 2.5 lac bitcoin transactions are performed daily which will scale to more than 10 lac transactions per day by 2030.
According to my opinion made after studying the view of many economists, industrialists, tech enthusiasts and statisticians, I believe:
- Very soon it would be centralised.
- It has a dazzling future with huge profit margins for its holders.
- Mass-market will embrace crypto payments like UPIs today
- Countries across the world would approve Bitcoin as a legal tender.
- It would be one of the most technically developed, efficient, fast and secure cryptocurrencies of all time.
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- Can China’s Real Estate Crisis Bring Down the Global Economy?
Hello, I am Aryan. I am passionate about writing about topics ranging from cryptocurrency and blockchain to modern developing technologies such as ML, AI, IoT, etc. Also, the collaboration of Finance and Technology attracts me.