Summary of Bitcoin 2019 Annual Review by Jameson Lopp
January 10, 2020 – Despite skepticism in Bitcoin as a currency for financial transaction networks implemented using blockchain technology, it continues to grow. Last year 2019 was rather silent compared with the previous years’ hype. This allowed an opportunity for start-up, crypto-savvy, academe, and regulators to adopt and understand the usage of Bitcoin in the digital ecosystem.
Mr. Jameson Loop, an expert in crypto-asset infrastructure, released the 2019 Bitcoin annual review wherein he compiled statistical measurements of how Bitcoin grew in 2019, citing multiple sources.
There are reports that bitcoin’s demise may have been the wrong prediction; in a statement of Mr. Lopp;
“Bitcoin is at the forefront of an increasingly complex ecosystem that continues to grow in a variety of ways. And for the 11th straight year, it stubbornly refused to die – though it would be premature to predict the death of Bitcoin obituaries!”
General Interest – highest search interest from developing countries
Countries with the most relative interest in searching for Bitcoin in 2018 are Ghana and Nigeria replacing Australia and Singapore from 2017. While in 2019 countries with the most relative search interest for Bitcoin in 2019, Nigeria has risen from 5th to 1st place since 2018.”
Academe and education interest
Google scholar articles mentioning Bitcoin since 2009 has increased. In 2009, there were 83 items. In 2019, 13. Mr. Lopp believes that academic interest will continue to increase, which is excellent for long-term prospects of what the ecosystem is building”.
Bitcoin as Economics – the market, transaction fees, venture capital, and exchange rate
As of December 29, 2019 [refer to twitter post], “2019 spike were less than 10% of the highest fee days seen in 2018”.
Venture capital funding was down 18% year over year and from the year 2012 $2M to the year 2019 $2,555M”. The ICO market metrics crushed by “85% over the year as many overfunded and overhyped projects failed to deliver their promises”. And part of significant growth of the Bitcoin market is BTC’s exchange rate doubled for the year, from his twitter statement “Bitcoin exchange rate volatility stayed low throughout 2019, hovering around 4% for trailing 30 and 60-day price changes”.
Bitcoin as Currency
The debate of whether Bitcoin is a currency or not is still disputed. While an economist defines money as a store of value, a medium of exchange, and unit of account, when measured against limited supply and demand, Bitcoin is hard to earn. However, it appears to libertarians because it decentralizes the money outside the institutional banking system. Mr. Lopp statement:
As usual, many of Bitcoin’s economic metrics correlated to the exchange rate, which was fairly flat throughout the year” gains were modest in terms of the M1 Money supply. Both online and offline trading were fairly flats based in BTC denominated terms; the number of ATMs increases by 56% during 2019 to 6,387
He concluded that people should not only be familiar with the exchange rate of Bitcoin. It is one of just many metrics they can use to observe the evolution of ecosystems. While any given parameter can be gamed or taken from sources that aren’t 100% reliable, by using a diversity of metrics and sources, we can get a rough idea of the trends in this space.
Source: Jameson Lopp
This article is published on BitPinas: [Summary] Bitcoin 2019 Annual Review by Jameson Lopp
More Articles from BitPinas’ 2019 PH Crypto and Blockchain Year in Review:
- Alex Timbol – Partnerships Manager at Elastos Philippines / Cyber Republic
- BlockDevs Asia – Non-Profit Blockchain Consulting Firm
- Colin Goltra – Crypto Adviser and Formerly from Coins.ph
- Christina Gallano – Founder at blockJuan and Technical Project Manager at ConsenSys
- Eric Cristobal – Philippine Head at OKEx
- Emerson Fonseca – CEO of NEM Philippines and Paylance
- Gail Macapagal – Country Director from DynaQuest
- Isabel Laurel – Fintech Consultant and Founder of Coinfemme Brand
- Leah Callon-Butler – Director at Emfarsis
- Lance Pormarejo – Business Dev at Gameworks
- Luis Buenaventura – Co-Founder of BSP-Licensed Bloom Solutions
- Miguel Cuneta – Co-Founder of BSP-Licensed SCI Ventures
- Miko Ilas – Head of Binance Filipino Community
- Myrtle Ramos – Founder of Blockchain Firm BlockTides
- Nathan Smale – Principal Consultant at Emfarsis
- Peter Ing – Country Manager of BlockchainSpace
- Atty. Rafael Padilla – Legal Director at Farcove Consulting and Co-Founder of BlockDevs Asia
- Randy Knutson – CEO of Blockchain Solutions DynaQuest
- Tim Ying – CEO of GOW Exchange
