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[1] 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[3] and subsequently, we saw these other efforts emerge:
