2020 has been an unforgettable year when the virus put the world in lockdown and economic development slowed down in every country. For the cryptocurrency industry, this year is a year of surge in the number of institutional admissions, and it is also a year of dramatic rise of the DeFi sector.
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global search interest
Global search interest in Bitcoin rose from 45 in January to 100 in November, according to Google search data. Still, searches this year are less than a quarter of what they were in January 2018.
Among them, Nigeria, South Africa, Australia, Switzerland and Ghana are the top five regions in search volume this year.
The most searched bitcoin-related phrases were “bitcoin price,” “bitcoin dollar,” “bitcoin stock,” and “bitcoin dollar price,” with “bitcoin price” being the most popular search phrase.
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code progress
If ranked by Github activity, Bitcoin is the third most active cryptocurrency.
Ahead of it: Chainlink, a blockchain-based oracle network, and Lisk, a platform for launching decentralized applications.
For the year, Bitcoin’s Github repository had 2,632 commits from more than 100 contributors, while Chainlink had 3,592 commits (62 contributors), and Lisk had 3,453 commits (63 contributors).
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Market Cap and Dominance
In 2020, Bitcoin performed very strongly, with the price reaching as high as $28,500, and the market value soaring to a record high of $500 billion, more than a third higher than the peak in 2017. If calculated according to the bitcoin in circulation, the market value of bitcoin this year has actually exceeded its all-time high before the price reached a new high.
The soaring bitcoin may be mainly due to the recovery of the stock market and the surge of institutional investors-purchasing a large number of bitcoins through compliant entrances such as Grayscale and Square.
In 2020, Bitcoin's market dominance has experienced wild swings. According to data from CoinMarketCap, Bitcoin’s dominance this year has ranged from 56% to 69%. From January to September, Bitcoin dominance fell sharply, but from October onwards, Bitcoin dominance gradually increased.
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Chain transactions
Bitcoin’s transaction fees hit an average of more than $55 per transaction in December 2019, making it uncompetitive for small transactions, a point of contention that has raged in recent years.
Things have improved a lot since then, with Bitcoin’s average transaction fee below $2 for most of 2020. This is due to the increasing use of batching of transactions by exchanges, as well as the increasing use of segregated witness addresses.
Since the beginning of the year, Bitcoin’s daily transaction volume has increased slightly. The peak in March was 330,000 transactions/day, the low point in April was 264,000 transactions/day, and it returned to 310,000 transactions/day at the end of the year.
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Trading volume
Trading volume
As the price has grown, so has bitcoin trading activity this year -- surpassing all-time highs.
According to data from Messari, Bitcoin’s real on-chain transaction volume reached $114 billion in November this year, surpassing the monthly peak in 2017.
This value is 9 times lower than the actual trading volume, and it excludes the unreliable data caused by artificial exaggeration and "washing volume" of the exchange.
The number of Bitcoin ATMs available has also increased significantly in 2020, growing at the fastest rate ever. According to data from coin ATM radar, there are currently at least 13,400 bitcoin ATMs worldwide, up from 6,039 a year ago and 460 five years ago.
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Active addresses
As expected, the number of daily active Bitcoin addresses has also increased significantly in 2020, growing by nearly 50% as the value increased and transaction activity increased, but it still failed to break the record set in December 2017.
In addition to activity, the number of Bitcoin millionaires is also skyrocketing. According to BitInfoCharts, there are now more than 67,000 Bitcoin millionaires, up from 25,000 a month ago.
lightning network
lightning network
For a long time, the Lightning Network has been regarded as a solution to Bitcoin's scaling problems and transaction congestion problems. Since the launch of the Lightning Network in early 2018, the number of nodes and channels running on the network has been increasing, before dropping slightly in mid to late 2019.
The total number of Lightning Network nodes increased from 4,923 in January to more than 8,000 in December, reaching an all-time high and a year-on-year increase of more than 60%. Likewise, the total payment capacity of the network has grown parabolicly since March and now exceeds $24.7 million.
The number of Lightning payment channels has grown slowly this year, rising nearly 20 percent from 27,929 in January to 33,483 on December 19.
Commercial applications of the Lightning Network have also increased. Bitfinex, one of the first exchanges to support the Lightning Network, has added support for large value channels, allowing users to deposit more bitcoin using the solution. Likewise, Kraken announced plans to add support for Lightning in early 2021.
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Bitcoin DeFi
Even though DeFi is primarily associated with the Ethereum ecosystem, there have been projects in recent years working on mapping Bitcoin as a synthetic asset onto other blockchains.
By far the most popular is WBTC, a Bitcoin-backed ERC-20 token that can be used on Ethereum-based DeFi protocols such as Uniswap and Compound. Currently, more than 120,000 bitcoins are locked in WBTC, an increase of more than 4,000 times over last year, and a value of more than $3 billion.
mining
mining
As in previous years, Bitcoin’s computing power hit record highs in a row in 2020. At the beginning of the year, it was only slightly above 100 EH/s per second, and then climbed to an all-time high of 157.6 EH/s in October.
As the value of Bitcoin grows faster than changes in mining difficulty, the profitability of Bitcoin mining has grown throughout 2020, with unit mining revenue rising from $0.155 at the beginning of the year to a peak of $0.2.
Poolin's vice president said: "Bitcoin's hash rate exploded in 2020, and we saw an increase from about 100 EH/s to 150 EH/s - an impressive growth rate. This means that people compare Confidence in Bitcoin is very strong. Miners are expanding and building new infrastructure, which in turn protects the Bitcoin ecological network.”
In terms of geographical distribution, the Chinese region is still the main contributor to Bitcoin’s hash rate, accounting for 65% of Bitcoin’s hash rate as of December 2020. The US, Russia and Kazakhstan came in second, third and fourth with 6-7% each.
This dominance is likely a result of easier domestic availability of mining equipment and low energy costs – as most major ASIC manufacturers are based in Asia.
epilogue
epilogue
2020 has been a record high year for Bitcoin, which has experienced a dramatic price recovery, climbing from a low of $3,800 to a peak of $28,600, driven by heightened interest from institutions, investment funds, and retail investors.
2020 is also the 12th year that Bitcoin has gone through. It has witnessed the ups and downs of various cryptocurrencies, adapted to the ever-changing global capital market environment, stepped into the mainstream field of vision step by step amidst the chaos, and has been recognized by more and more People use it as a store of value asset other than gold.
I hope that in the new year, Bitcoin will continue to be exciting.
