Cardano distinguishes itself by using mathematical principles in its consensus mechanism and unique multilayer architecture, which makes it stand out from other blockchain competitors. With a team involved in the creation of Ethereum, many believe that Cardano is the next-generation cryptocurrency solution.

What is Cardano?

Cardano is a third-generation, decentralized proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain platform designed to be a more efficient alternative to proof-of-work (PoW) networks. Scalability, interoperability, and sustainability on PoW networks like Ethereum are limited by infrastructure burdens from increasing costs, energy usage, and slow transaction times.

The Cardano platform runs on the Ouroboros consensus protocol. Ouroboros, created by Cardano in its founding phase, is the first PoS protocol that is not only proven secure but also the first informed by scientific peer-reviewed research.

Each development phase, or era, on Cardano's roadmap is clarified by a research-based framework, combining peer-reviewed insights with evidence-based methods to make progress towards and achieve milestones associated with the future direction of both blockchain network and ADA token usage. The Cardano blockchain can be used to build smart contracts, which can then further create applications and protocols.

In addition, the ability to send and receive funds instantly, with minimal fees, is highly sought after in the business and financial world. Instead of trying to thwart global regulators, Cardano is building a blockchain while considering regulations, to provide financial services for all.

Brief History of Cardano

Charles Hoskinson started Cardano with his former Ethereum colleague Jerry Wood in 2014 after leaving Ethereum, following differences with the Ethereum Foundation team about governance and venture capital roles.

Cardano is supported by the same-named foundation that assists in protocol research and development and its community. The development of the Cardano project is led by the for-profit company Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK). Hoskinson also heads IOHK. The project enlisted top academics at several universities around the world to review their work before announcing Cardano to the world.

In 2017, Cardano launched its original cryptocurrency, ADA, named in honor of 19th-century mathematician Ada Lovelace, the daughter of English poet Lord Byron. Lovelace is credited as one of the first computer programmers in the world by being the first person to publish her ideas about computer machine algorithms, such as the "analytical engine." The Cardano project itself is named after Italian polymath Gerolamo Cardano. Also in that year, Hoskinson and IOHK sponsored a research laboratory focused on blockchain technology at the University of Edinburgh and the Tokyo Institute of Technology.

In 2019, the Ministry of Education in Georgia signed a memorandum of understanding with the Free University of Tbilisi to use Cardano and Atala to build a credential verification system for Georgia. Shoe manufacturer New Balance announced a pilot project on the Cardano blockchain to track the authenticity of its latest basketball shoes.

In 2020, Hoskinson opened a blockchain research project at the University of Wyoming. This collaboration involved a $500,000 award to the University of Wyoming to support blockchain technology development through the creation of the UWYO IOHK Advanced Blockchain Development Laboratory.

IOHK announced a partnership with the Ethiopian government in 2018 to spread their technology across various industries throughout the country. In April 2021, IOHK and the Ethiopian Ministry of Education announced plans to launch an identity and record system on Cardano for five million students in the country.

Who Created Cardano?

In 2013, Charles Hoskinson founded an online school called the Bitcoin Education Project where he met Vitalik Buterin, who shortly thereafter became one of the eight original founders of Ethereum. After some disputes about whether Ethereum should be a for-profit company, Charles left Ethereum in 2014. After his departure from Ethereum, he took a six-month sabbatical. After being approached by Jeremy Wood, a former Ethereum colleague, IOHK was formed.

With an initial investment and the crypto market boom, IOHK is now funded for decades. IOHK is an engineering company that builds cryptocurrencies and blockchains for corporations, government entities, and academic institutions. The company has a team of engineers, scientists, business professionals, educators, and open-source collaborators spread geographically.

They built Cardano from the ground up using a principled, research-driven approach reviewed by peers. Cardano development remains IOHK's flagship project. Although Hoskinson and Wood are the masterminds behind the core principles and smart contract platform that form Cardano, they do not own or operate the Cardano blockchain.

In fact, various different stakeholders are involved in this project:

• Cardano Foundation - Acts as a non-profit entity, custodian for the entire project to help market and ensure the security of the blockchain.
• IOHK - Established in 2015 by Charles Hoskinson and Jeremy Wood, this research and development company has helped design and engineer the Cardano blockchain.
• Emurgo - Acts as a major funding entity to support Cardano financially and help with its development.

History of Cardano ADA Price

Cardano made its debut in 2017 with a market capitalization of $600 million. By the end of that year, its market capitalization had swelled to $10 billion. In 2018, it skyrocketed further to around $33 billion, eventually dropping back down to $10 billion. At the time of writing, its market capitalization is at nearly $28 billion based on coingecko.com.

ADA Cardano has traded in line with most of the cryptocurrency industry over the past few years. During the late 2017 and early 2018 bull market, the price of ADA surged from $0.03 to $1.20, bringing the project's value close to $32 billion. While early investors were given an immediate profit of 3,900% in a short time. According to coingecko.com, ADA started trading at around $0.02 per token. Since then, it has surged to $1.86 per token in mid-May 2021, from 18 cents on January 1, 2021. However, for most of ADA's existence, it has been between $0.02 and $0.40 cents per token.

Although the price of Cardano has dropped back below $1, it is believed that if the project can deliver on its promises, the value of ADA should have no problem increasing. In addition to its price, it is important to note that ADA has a fixed monetary policy, meaning only 45 billion ADA will ever be created. After that number is reached, no more Cardano crypto will be created. Cardano sold 25,927,070,538 ADA during its initial sale, with the remaining approximately 19 billion ADA to be released through the blockchain as rewards for mining blocks.

The remaining ADA is set to be distributed in the form of staking rewards through blocks generated in the Cardano blockchain. With only a limited amount of ADA available, in theory, there will be an increase in demand for the coin. This deflationary monetary model is expected to create demand for ADA in the future. The highest price of Cardano ADA of all time was $3.09, which occurred on September 2, 2021.

How Successful is Cardano's Adoption?

The Cardano community has 350,000 members. The Cardano network has registered 700,000 wallets and many community members have more than 1 wallet, so if we average it out there are 350,000 people. This is consistent with 315,000 users on Reddit (based on the Cardano subReddit), one of the most popular social networks for discussing ideas and learning (https://www.reddit.com/r/cardano/), as well as, with the same number of followers, Charles Hoskinson's Twitter account @IOHK_Charles (founder of Cardano and CEO of IOHK) and with 312,000 followers on the Cardano Foundation's Twitter account @CardanoStiftung. Of course, this is an illustrative calculation and not generated from accurate records, but it is useful for understanding the overall picture.

Furthermore, the billion-dollar cryptocurrency investment fund, FD7 Ventures, announced that they have completed the purchase of Cardano (ADA) worth $380M USD with funds that are a conversion from the company's existing Bitcoin (BTC) holdings. The transaction was completed on Thursday, March 4, putting the company ahead of their previous goal to complete the conversion by mid to late March. There is no doubt that Cardano is slowly gaining adoption.

Ethereum is often referred to as the second most popular cryptocurrency after Bitcoin. But unlike Bitcoin and most other virtual currencies, Ethereum is intended to be more than just a medium of exchange or store of value. Instead, Ethereum calls itself a decentralized computing network built on blockchain technology.

What is Ethereum?

Ethereum is a decentralized blockchain platform founded in 2014 by Vitalik Buterin. Like Bitcoin, Ethereum is an open-source project that is not owned or operated by any single individual. This means that anyone, anywhere can download the software and start interacting with the network.

Ethereum describes itself as a "world computer on blockchain." Unlike the Bitcoin network, Ethereum's primary goal is not to act as a form of currency, but rather to enable those who interact with the Ethereum Network to create and operate "smart contracts" and decentralized applications (dapps) that can be used without the risk of centralized network downtime, fraud, or trust issues or intermediaries. Smart contracts are applications that run exactly as programmed without the possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud, or third-party interference - smart contracts will work exactly the same every time they are used.

Ethereum uses a "virtual machine" to achieve all of this, which is like a giant global computer made up of many individual computers running Ethereum software. The virtual currency unit that allows this system to work is called "ether." People interact with the Ethereum network by using ether to pay for the network and execute smart contracts.

Ethereum aims to take the decentralization, security, and openness provided by blockchain and extend it to nearly everything that can be counted - storing data, transferring mortgages, and tracking complex financial instruments.

A Brief History of Ethereum

Vitalik Buterin was introduced and interested in blockchain technology when he got involved in Bitcoin as a 17-year-old programmer in 2011 and co-founded Bitcoin Magazine. He began envisioning a platform that went beyond the financial use cases allowed by Bitcoin and released a white paper in 2013 that outlined the concept that would eventually become Ethereum using a general-purpose scripting language.

In 2014, Buterin and another Ethereum co-founder launched a crowdsourcing campaign where they sold ether (Ethereum tokens) to participants to realize their vision and raised over $18 million. The first direct release of Ethereum, known as Frontier, was launched in 2015. Since then, the platform has grown rapidly and there are currently hundreds of developers involved.

Ethereum still faces difficulties and suffers from some of the same issues as Bitcoin, especially in its scalability. In 2016, $50 million in ether (ETH) was stolen from a dapp user known as The DAO by an anonymous hacker, raising questions about the platform's security.

After weeks of deliberation, Ethereum developers reached a consensus that they should reverse time - reversing the hacked DAO transactions and recovering lost user ETH. The change could only be implemented through an upgrade across the network, also known as a hard fork. Those who opposed the change argued to maintain the integrity of the original blockchain transaction history and balances - the hacked funds and all. This caused a split in the Ethereum community and split into two blockchains: Ethereum (ETH) and Ethereum Classic (ETC). Since the split, the Ethereum network has undergone seven more hard forks, although no subsequent upgrades have reached the same level of controversy as the "The DAO Fork" in 2016.

There have been dramatic fluctuations in the price of ether, but the Ethereum currency grew more than 13,000% in 2017. This incredible growth was attractive to many investors, but volatility made other investors cautious. The need for Ethereum 2.0 and the expected benefits for network efficiency and scalability grew stronger since CryptoKitties - a "digital cat" collection game - was a sensation in 2017. The popularity of initial coin offerings (ICOs) - a way to crowdfund the early stages of a cryptocurrency project - with the amount of dollars raised reaching its peak in 2018. A total of $7.8 billion was raised for more than 1,000 projects that year. According to ICObench, more than 80% of all ICOs rely on the Ethereum blockchain to create their tokens and issue them to investors.

The trend, like the ICO explosion in 2018, shows how blockchain technology can be utilized for more than just peer-to-peer electronic cash. Ethereum, as the world's first general-purpose blockchain platform, has become a hub where dapp developers gather to build every and all manner of use cases for blockchain, whether it be gaming or finance. The latest trend dominating user traffic and transaction volume on Ethereum is decentralized finance (DeFi). The current DeFi movement sweeping Ethereum consists of dapps that mimic traditional financial players like lending services, exchanges, and derivative markets. As of July 29, 2020, crypto assets worth $3.68 billion were locked up by users in various DeFi protocols.

As of May 2021, Ethereum is the second-largest virtual currency in the market, behind only Bitcoin. Unlike Bitcoin, there is no limit to the amount of ETH that can be created. Ethereum is currently undergoing a long-awaited upgrade known as Ethereum 2.0, which is intended to allow the network to scale while addressing congestion issues that have slowed it down in the past.

Who Created Ethereum?

Buterin, a Russian-Canadian programmer, first heard about Bitcoin from his father in 2011. He was 17 years old at the time and had dismissed the idea of Bitcoin due to its lack of intrinsic value. However, after their second meeting, Buterin began to understand the essence of such a currency and how it could level the playing field for society.

At that time, Buterin lacked the financial and computational resources to mine or buy Bitcoin. So, he chose the next available option: working and getting paid in Bitcoin. He was paid 5 BTC for every post he contributed to the online Bitcoin forum. He then teamed up with another Bitcoin enthusiast, Mihai Alisie, and co-founded Bitcoin Magazine at the end of 2011.

From there, Buterin began to play with the basic technology of Bitcoin. He even contributed to a project called Colored Coins, which appeared to represent real-world assets on the Bitcoin blockchain. In less than two years after his debut in the crypto scene, Buterin had met great thinkers from around the world who were working to expand Bitcoin's blockchain functionality in one area or another. He then concluded that the only viable way to avoid Bitcoin protocol restrictions was to build a new network from scratch with a universal computational programming language.

This moment gave birth to the idea of Ethereum. And in less than four weeks, he had the foundation for what would become the second most valuable crypto ecosystem. Buterin published the Ethereum white paper in November 2013, and it resonated with many Bitcoin supporters. Some of those inspired by this movement joined Buterin as founding members of Ethereum's team. Currently, there are eight people officially recognized as one of Ethereum's co-founders, including Buterin.

• Mihai Alisie

Alisie, due to his previous partnership with Buterin and his expertise in cybernetic economics, was a founding member of Ethereum's team. He played a critical role in establishing the Ethereum Foundation in Switzerland. He helped set up the legal framework for ether's pre-sale and later emerged as the vice president of the Ethereum Foundation. In 2015, Alisie started his own Ethereum-based project called Akasha.

• Anthony Di Iorio

Anthony Di Iorio was one of Ethereum's financial sponsors. He then took a back seat after the team decided to adopt a non-profit business model. Following his decision to take a passive role, Di Iorio emerged as the chief digital officer of the Toronto Stock Exchange for a time before founding Decentral, the company behind the Jaxx digital wallet.

• Amir Chetrit

Amir Chetrit had a working relationship with Buterin while working at Colored Coins. Buterin asked Chetrit to join the founding team in December 2013. However, at a meeting of one of the founders in June 2014, other team members and Ethereum developers questioned Chetrit's lack of input. It was at this meeting that Chetrit agreed to step back from active involvement in Ethereum development while retaining his position as one of the founders.

• Charles Hoskinson

Charles Hoskinson emerged as the CEO of the Ethereum startup in December 2013 only to press the exit button after the team decided to promote a non-profit architecture for the organization. This prompted Hoskinson to create his own version of a programmable blockchain ecosystem called Cardano. The Cardano platform is currently considered one of the main competitors to Ethereum.

• Gavin Wood

Gavin Wood was one of the core contributors during the early stages of Ethereum development. He obtained the co-founder position as a result of his programming contributions. He created the first Ethereum testnet and even published the project's yellow paper - the technical specification of the original white paper published by Buterin. Wood also proposed the native programming language of the ecosystem, Solidity. Recently, Wood has been busy working on the Web3 Foundation and its flagship product, Polkadot.

• Jeffrey Wilcke

Like Wood, Wilcke became a sole founder because of his programming contributions. He was working on MasterCoin when he discovered Ethereum. He started writing the Ethereum platform in Google Go independently. He is currently focused on his game development studio, Grid Games.

• Joseph Lubin

Before joining the Ethereum team, Joseph Lubin had accumulated a lot of experience in various fields. He then launched his own non-profit company, ConsenSys, which serves as an incubator for blockchain startups that want to use the Ethereum ecosystem. He has also been influential in several high-profile partnerships that Ethereum has secured over the years.

History of Ethereum Price

The price of Ethereum (ETH) in USD continued to increase in value during April 2021, at one point reaching over 2,500 US dollars. Like Bitcoin (BTC), the price of ETH rose in 2021 but for different reasons: Ethereum, for example, made news when a digital artwork was sold as the world's most expensive NFT for over 38,000 ETH - or 69.3 million US dollars. Unlike Bitcoin - where price growth was driven by the IPO of the largest US crypto trader Coinbase - the rally on Ethereum came from technological developments that caused excitement among traders.

First, the so-called "Berlin Update" was launched on the Ethereum network in April 2021, an update intended to pave the way for a reduction in ETH gas fees - or transaction cost reduction. Second, the arrival of Uniswap V3 in May 2021 - a smart contract protocol - is expected to further optimize Ethereum trading.

According to coingecko.com, Ethereum's current all-time high is 4,878 US dollars, which occurred on November 10, 2021.

How Successful is Ethereum Adoption?

For Ethereum, the first market always targeted is business. As a blockchain company, Ethereum has a large enough corporate base that uses it for transactions. There is also the Ethereum Enterprise Alliance (EEA), which connects Fortune 500 companies - such as Microsoft, JP Morgan, Credit Suisse, and Intel - with Ethereum experts. Not to mention Visa accepting settlement in the form of cryptocurrencies, and choosing the Ethereum blockchain to run it.

But most importantly, Ethereum is still the go-to choice for retail users. Especially in the decentralized finance sector (DeFi), where many dapps are launched on the Ethereum Network.

Meanwhile, NFT (non-fungible token) has become one of the main topics of news and discussion as tokenization begins to develop. There are many examples of celebrities, groups, and organizations launching NFTs, selling token versions of songs, tweets, watches, and anything that has any value.

For now, we just need to wait and see if Ethereum can maintain its dominance amid the onslaught of its competitors.

Bitcoin is not only the first cryptocurrency, but also the most famous of more than 5,000 cryptocurrencies that exist today. But what is Bitcoin exactly? Is it a type of currency, a store of value, a payment network, or an asset class? To delve into Bitcoin, first let's understand its purpose.

What is the Purpose of Bitcoin's Creation?

Bitcoin is an exclusive digital currency that can be transferred directly over the internet between two people, without intermediaries such as banks. Bitcoin operates as an alternative to traditional fiat with its existence as a form of digital money. Bitcoin's creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, originally described the need for "an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust."

With Bitcoin, there is no need for a third party such as a bank or payment company to handle and process all transactions, making Bitcoin a more streamlined, fair, and clean payment method. Instead, someone can send payment money directly to another party: without a central authority (or the fees that come with it), the process is faster and fairer. Removing the third party gives individuals total ownership of their finances and frees them from the "trusted" third party who can exploit their funds.

From a user's perspective, Bitcoin is nothing more than a mobile application or computer program that provides a personal Bitcoin wallet and allows users to send and receive bitcoin. This is how Bitcoin works for most users.

Behind the scenes, the Bitcoin network shares a public ledger called the "blockchain." This ledger contains every transaction that has ever been processed, allowing user computers to verify the validity of each transaction. The authenticity of each transaction is protected by a digital signature that corresponds to the sender's address, allowing all users to have full control over sending bitcoin from their own Bitcoin address. In addition, anyone can process transactions using specialized hardware computing power and receive rewards in the form of bitcoin for this service. This is called "mining."

A Brief History of Bitcoin

Bitcoin is the first implementation of a concept called "cryptocurrency", first described in 1998 by Wei Dai in the cypherpunks mailing list, suggesting the idea of a new form of money that uses cryptography to control its creation and transactions, rather than a central authority. He published a paper discussing "B-money". He discussed the idea of a digital currency that could be sent with a group of digital pseudonyms that could not be traced. In the same year, another effort called Bit Gold was designed by blockchain pioneer Nick Szabo. Bit Gold also aimed to create a decentralized digital currency. Szabo's idea was driven by inefficiencies in traditional financial systems, such as requiring metal to make coins and reducing the amount of trust needed to make transactions. Although neither was officially launched, they are part of the inspiration behind Bitcoin.

The specifications and proof of concept for Bitcoin, a paper titled "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System," were published in 2009 on the cryptography mailing list by Satoshi Nakamoto. Soon after, the paper spread to almost every corner of the internet, especially among mainstream cryptography researchers.

Within the paper, Satoshi Nakamoto introduced the blockchain network and explained how it could massively improve financial systems, especially on the internet. Comparing it to a digital ledger, the creator described blockchain as a decentralized peer-to-peer network that doesn't require trust. Additionally, he focused on how blockchain doesn't require intermediaries.

Satoshi left the project at the end of 2010 without revealing much about himself. The community has grown exponentially with many developers continuing to improve Bitcoin.

Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?

One of the most popular mysteries of Bitcoin is the identity of its founder, Satoshi Nakamoto, which is an alias. Little is known about him. Although many attempts have been made to uncover his identity, Nakamoto has proven difficult to identify. Several individuals have been proposed, but none have been proven to be Satoshi Nakamoto without any doubt.

In March 2014, Newsweek identified Dorian Nakamoto as the creator of Bitcoin. The publication of the article caused a stir in the crypto world and the wider technology community, as it was the first time a mainstream publication tried to uncover the identity of the creator of Bitcoin. Newsweek claimed some similarities between Satoshi Nakamoto and Dorian Nakamoto. For example, both were suspected of having libertarian tendencies and Japanese connections. (Dorian, who graduated from Cal Poly Pomona with a degree in physics and worked on secret defense projects, is Japanese-American). The article's author also claimed that Nakamoto stated that he was "no longer" involved with Bitcoin and that he had "passed it on" to someone else. Dorian Nakamoto later denied the quote and claimed he had misunderstood the question. He told the Associated Press, "I have nothing to do with it."

Most individuals suspected to be Satoshi Nakamoto have denied the claims or remained silent. This was not the case for Craig Wright, an Australian scientist. In December 2015, Wired Magazine wrote a profile on Wright, claiming he had "obtained the strongest evidence of the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto." The article reported on Wright's appearance via Skype at that year's Bitcoin Investor Conference in Las Vegas. When asked about his credentials, Wright claimed he was "a little bit of everything." He listed his degrees, including a master's in statistics and two doctorates. He also said, "I've been involved in all of this for a long time... I've been trying to keep my head down."

The Wired evidence consists of references to "cryptocurrency writing" in Wright's blog that appeared several months before the release of the Bitcoin whitepaper. In addition, there are leaked emails and correspondence with Wright's lawyer referring to a "P2P distributed ledger." Furthermore, leaked transcripts of meetings with lawyers and tax officials quote him as saying, "I did my best to try and hide the fact that I've been running Bitcoin since 2009. In the end, I think half the world will know."

The claim immediately raised doubts. Wired followed up its report to note several inconsistencies in Wright's story. For example, the blog entry appears to be outdated. The evidence also shows that the public encryption key associated with Satoshi Nakamoto is also outdated. Even one of Ethereum's founders, Vitalik Buterin, who is reluctant to comment on politics in the cryptocurrency world, openly called Wright a fraud.

The most plausible candidate may be Nick Szabo. Nick Szabo is a computer engineer and law scholar. He is appreciated for pioneering the concept of smart contracts in a 1996 paper. In 2008, he conceptualized a decentralized currency he called Bit Gold, a predecessor to Bitcoin. He described Bit Gold as "a protocol in which expensive bits cannot be forged online with minimal reliance on trusted third parties." This is similar to the concept of Bitcoin.

Author Dominic Frisby attempts to make the case that Nick Szabo is Satoshi Nakamoto in his book titled 'Bitcoin: The Future of Money?' Frisby consulted a stylometry expert who concluded that Szabo's writing style is similar to famous writings of Satoshi. Other clues are that both Szabo and Satoshi reference economist Carl Menger. Additionally, Frisby knows Szabo has worked for DigiCash, an early effort to bring cryptography to digital payments. In the author's view, all of this strongly supports the possibility that Nick Szabo is Satoshi Nakamoto.

Bitcoin Price History

For most Bitcoin investors, the past ten years have been a rollercoaster ride. Despite daily volatility, where double-digit increases and price drops are not uncommon, they have had to face many issues that disrupt its ecosystem, from various scams and fraudsters to the absence of regulation that adds to its volatility. Despite all of this, there have been periods when cryptocurrency price changes have even surpassed their usually fluctuating changes, resulting in massive price bubbles.

When Bitcoin was first introduced in 2009, it was worth $0. In 2011, this cryptocurrency reached the level of $1 for the first time. Bitcoin prices surged from $1 in April of that year to a peak of $32 in June, a 3200% increase in just three short months. The sharp increase was followed by a sharp recession in the crypto market, and the price of Bitcoin hit its lowest point at $2 in November 2011. There was a slight increase the following year, and prices have risen from $4.80 in May to $13.20 on August 15.

2013 proved to be a pivotal year for Bitcoin prices. The digital currency started trading this year at $13.40 and experienced two price bubbles in the same year. The first occurred when prices soared to $220 in early April 2013. The rapid increase was followed by an equally rapid price drop, and this cryptocurrency changed hands at $70 in mid-April.

But that was not the end of Bitcoin's price action. Another rally (and corresponding drop) occurred towards the end of that year. In early October, the cryptocurrency was trading at $123.20. By December, it had surged to $1,156.10, but dropped to around $760 three days later. The rapid changes signaled the start of a years-long decline in Bitcoin's price, touching a low of $315 in early 2015.

The fifth price bubble occurred in 2017. The cryptocurrency was hovering around the $1,000 price range at the beginning of that year. After a brief dip in the first two months, the price saw an incredible increase from $975.70 on March 25 to $20,089 on December 17.

The 2017 hot streak also helped firmly put Bitcoin in the mainstream spotlight. Governments and economists began to take notice and develop digital currencies to compete with Bitcoin. Analysts debated its value as an asset even as many called experts and investors made extreme price predictions.

As in the past, Bitcoin's price moved sideways for the next two years. Among them, there were signs of life. For example, there was a resurgence in price and trading volume in June 2019 and the price surpassed $10,000, reigniting hopes for another rally. But it dropped to $7,112.73 in December of the same year.

It wasn't until 2020, when economic activity was shut down due to the pandemic, that Bitcoin's price became active again. The cryptocurrency started the year at $7,200. The pandemic-related closures, and subsequent government policies, added to investor fears about the global economy and accelerated Bitcoin's rise. On November 23 closing, Bitcoin was trading at $18,353.

The pandemic devastated most stock markets in March but subsequent stimulus checks of up to $1,200 may have had a direct effect on the market. After the release of the checks, the entire stock market, including cryptocurrency, experienced a huge rebound from its March lows and even continued to break previous all-time highs.

This check further reinforced concerns about inflation and the potential weakening of the purchasing power of the US dollar. Money printing by governments and central banks helped strengthen the narrative of Bitcoin as a store of value because its supply is limited to 21 million. This narrative began to attract institutional interest, not just retail investors, who were largely responsible for the price increase in 2017.

Sustained institutional interest in cryptocurrency further pushed its price up and Bitcoin reached just below $24,000 in December 2020, up 224% from the beginning of 2020. It took Bitcoin less than a month to break the previous price record and surpass $40,000 in January 2021. At its peak, the cryptocurrency changed hands at $41,528 on January 8, 2021. However, three days later, it was at $30,525.39. The latest record was when Bitcoin jumped to an all-time high of $69,044 on November 10, 2021.

Is Bitcoin Really Used by People?

There are increasingly more businesses and individuals using Bitcoin. This includes physical businesses such as restaurants, apartments, and law firms, as well as popular online services like Namecheap and Overstock.com. While Bitcoin remains a relatively new phenomenon, it is growing rapidly. In May 2018, the total value of all bitcoins in existence exceeded $100 billion USD, with bitcoins worth millions of dollars being traded every day.

In addition, El Salvador made Bitcoin legal tender on June 9, 2021. A significant moment for bitcoin and crypto at large, El Salvador is now the first country to recognize BTC as a form of payment for all forms of monetary debt. While the announcement was surprising, El Salvador is a prime example of a country that can benefit from BTC adoption.

El Salvador's announcement has drawn attention from other countries curious about adopting bitcoin. But it has also caught the eye of regulators and governing bodies such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which said El Salvador's decision raises "macroeconomic, financial, and legal issues."

Currently, there are around 18.4 million addresses that hold at least 0.001 BTC - an impressive number for a decentralized currency, but still only a small fraction of the world's population. There will undoubtedly be more pushback and challenges as El Salvador begins to adopt BTC on a larger scale. But if El Salvador's experiment goes well, it could be a turning point for large-scale BTC adoption worldwide.