It’s a new year, and with the new year, all the normal social media circle that is moving that is centered on predictions of “What will happen in 2020!” I would expand it out a bit and look at the next decade. But first I wanted to spend a minute going over the last (yes, I know I’m a year late, blah blah) to really drill in how far things have come.
Mining and network security
In 2010, the network was secured by Hobbyists Desktop CPUs, trivially over the power of any great resourceful actor. At the beginning of 2020, billions of dollars hardware that consume the collective electricity requirements throughout small nations are supplied to the operators of many different companies appreciated for billions of dollars (given, pie in the sky evasions, but still)) . In 10 years, the network’s security mechanism changed from consumer hardware and hobbyists to specialized ASIC equipment and professionally controlled data center operations.
Protocol development
In 2010, you were able to send Bitcoin to public keys (or IP addresses), timelock transactions (just the transaction, not utxo), do raw multisig, which was massive and expensive to send for themselves, and oh yes: Anyone could use any coins using OP_RETurn due to an error. And yes, I know the script system had much more when I talk about what could be practiced for an average person. In 2020… Yes, I think I have to bullet, point this:
- Use P2SH to make money for more advanced scripts (like multiSIG) cheaper for the sending party.
- Tidelock an actual Utxo for an absolute blockheight or unix timestamp.
- Tidelock an actual utxo for a relatively blockheight or unix -time stamp interval from its creation.
- Constructs transactions that do not have moldable txids for second layer protocols/chained transactions thanks to separate witness. (We can also now upgrade script easier because of the fact that Segwit has its own version. Versions instead of using very scarce undefined OPs.)
- Use a basic version of the lightning protocol, another layer enabled by the moldable fix implemented in Segwit.
- Have actually inserted side chains where more advanced and/or experimental functions can be implemented and tested more easily.
Ten years have produced an impressive amount of primitives that can be built on the core foundation of Bitcoin’s Base Network and Blockchain. Especially considering the complexity and difficulty of trying to ascertain consensus on upgrades and then implement and implement such upgrades if present.
Political relevance
In 2010, Bitcoin was just an insignificant blip on the radar. The CIA had Only just noticed and interested in it. Their answer was to get a developer to come in and give a lecture, resulting in the disappearance of Satoshi Nakamoto. Apart from that, people were not aware, politicians were not aware, most agencies were not aware (except the alphabet that we may not know now). Bitcoin was something unclear nothing.
In 2020 … Bitcoin has provided a whole market and an industry worth a hundreds of billions of dollars. Exchanges have made billions in sales from commercial fees. Miners have earned billions of dollars gathered in return for their operational investment. Tens of thousands of millions, possibly hundreds of millions, of humans own Bitcoin (Metrics here is very vague and difficult to really distill meaningful information from). We have gone from the CIA, which is hardly interested, to essentially every meaningful government in the world regularly with legislative meetings or committee meetings to discuss bitcoin and all that it has created in the form of its macroeconomic and geopolitical consequences, and how to can respond to them. Nations have launched Cryptocurrencies. Nations have sanctioned cryptocurrency addresses. They are officially at the table. Back in 2010, it was only an agency that is notorious for having their nose everywhere was to pay attention (as we know), now the whole world is attentive.
Things have changed. When the metaphor goes, good luck stopping the train.
(This is just part 1 of 4, read the next part tomorrow).
This is a guest post of Shinobi. Opinions that are expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those from BTC Inc or Bitcoin magazine.