It's never been more exciting to be a Bitcoiner.
The past year has been overflowing with victories for the Bitcoin ecosystem. From regulatory acceptance, to institutional adoption, to technical breakthroughs, the groundwork has been laid for Bitcoin’s next bull run to burn the hottest it ever has. Based on recent price action, it seems that the fire has already started.
Here are 9 of Bitcoin’s most exciting milestones in 2024, and 1 glimpse into what’s to come.
Bitcoin Spot ETFs Approved
On January 10, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved Bitcoin spot ETFs to trade in the United States.
It was a painstaking effort to convince the commission to do so, which required sweeping the agency in court before they were left with no option but to greenlight the products. Chairman Gensler left a very disgruntled letter behind upon admitting defeat, and the following day, the ETFs were live.
As of November, BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust – now the largest Bitcoin ETF in the world – holds 471,000 BTC worth $44 billion. It has had the largest and most successful ETF launch in the world by a wide margin, with demand helping send Bitcoin beyond its 2021 highs in March of this year.
Major institutions and even pension funds been identified investing in the ETFs, including the State of Wisconsin Investment Board.
Bitcoin’s 4th Halving Completed; Runes Have Arrived
Bitcoin’s fourth halving event occurred on April 19, 2024 at Block 840000. This block permanently reduced the number of new BTC mined per block from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC.
The Bitcoin halving is widely regarded as a mega-bullish event for BTC, as halving years generally precede massive bull market events for the 6 to 18 months to follow.
Ironically, that block and several to follow were some of the most lucrative for miners in Bitcoin history. That’s because the Bitcoin halving also marked the debut of the Runes protocol – a new metastandard introduced by Ordinals creator Casey Rordarmor for issuing fungible tokens on Bitcoin.
Bitcoin’s transaction fees briefly shot up to $127 a pop to mint all new memecoins at the time of the debut. Although these fees were quick to fall back to Earth, and Runes activity, largely settled down, the event further demonstrated how new functionality is coming to Bitcoin, and how this new functionality could drive demand for blockspace and help financially support miners in the long term.
Bitcoin Hash Rate, Corporate Mining Dominance Continues To Rise
For now, the Bitcoin network’s security is still thriving as strongly as ever.
Despite a brief pullback post-halving, Bitcoin’s total hashrate is back to breaking regular new highs, at 704 exahashes per second (EH/s) as of November.
With BTC’s latest price gains, its becoming more profitable for less efficient miners to come back online again, boosting network security even more. Nevertheless, the growing trend appears to be that large publicly traded miners account for a larger share of the network’s security worldwide, controlling 28.9% of the network as of October.
Bitcoin Reaches 1 Billion Transactions
At block 842241 on May 5, the Bitcoin blockchain processed its one billionth transaction. After more than 15 years of uptime, the network had handled an average of 178,475 daily transactions until that point.
While Bitcoin’s not the first blockchain to reach that figure (Ethereum has already handled well over 2 billion transactions) its sign that Bitcoin still has a long a deep history of value transfer – not just value storage.
In fact, volume is where Bitcoin really shines. As of July, Glassnode reported that Bitcoin wa handling $46.4 billion of on-chain volume per day – surpassing even Visa’s $38.9 billion figure. Without question, Bitcoin is growing into a dominant global settlement layer.
BOS Verifies First Bitcoin ZK Proof, Then Open Sources
At Bitcoin Nashville, a zero-knowledge (ZK) Proof was verified on Bitcoin mainnet for the first time using the revolutionary technology of BitcoinOS. The final verification took place at block 853626.
This moment produced shockwaves at the conference, as it proved possible what famous crypto developers – including Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin – had sought for Bitcoin for over a decade. With BitSNARK, Bitcoin now has the basic primitive to see and secure activity on other blockchains, providing a clear pathway to scaling and upgrading Bitcoin in layers without needing to change its base layer code.
In September, the first open-source code was unveiled showcasing the basic technology used by BOS to verify ZK proofs.
Trump Announces Strategic Bitcoin Reserve
Days later, Donald Trump delivered a speech at Bitcoin Nashville confirming rumors that, under his Presidency, the U.S. government would retain 100% of all of the Bitcoin it currently holds or acquires in the future.
The government’s coins – currently numbering over 200,000 BTC – were seized from criminals, and have been incrementally sold through OTC sales. Instead, Trump said all remaining Bitcoin would become part of the nation’s “Strategic National Bitcoin Stockpile.”
But this plan wasn’t just about HODLing: immediately after Trump’s speech, U.S. Senator Cynthia Lummis presented legislation to fulfill Trump’s vision, which also included plans to accumulate 1 million BTC within the reserve over the next five years.
Lummis’s bill – the “BITCOIN Act of 2024” – has recently been introduced to Congress for vote. For the first time, the most powerful, wealthiest nation in the world will seriously consider buying BTC.
Cardano Comes Home To Bitcoin
In late October, BOS contributor Edan Yago confirmed Cardano as the first Layer 1 blockchain with plans to integrate with the BOS Grail bridge.
For both Bitcoin and Cardano, this was a historic moment. For BTC holders, it meant they would soon be able to access DeFi on Cardano with cryptographic security guarantees for the first time, instead of needing to trust centralized custodians with their coins.
For Cardano, it meant it would soon plug into Bitcoin's $1.8 trillion liquidity pool, becoming a Bitcoin application layer and potentially absorbing some of its immense capital base.
For the broader crypto world, it demonstrated a new path forwards: one where altcoins can stop fighting Bitcoin, and instead unite around it by connecting to it via BOS, and complementing it with new technology.
Trump Wins Election, New All Time High
In early November, the Bitcoin community’s political wishes came true: Trump was successfully elected as 47th President of the United States.
Not only that, but the Republican Party – which became explicitly pro-crypto in its party platform earlier this year – retained control of Congress, and won majority control of the Senate.
With election uncertainty a thing of the past, Bitcoin is up 35% in the last month alone, reaching a new all time high above $93,000. The Trump pump is real, triggering right on cue for the bull market that historically accompanies the fourth quarter of a halving year.
The party’s resounding victory clears the way for the BITCOIN Act and other pro-crypto legislation to fly through parliament in 2025. At last, years of damage to the industry from a hostile administration may finally be reversed.
MicroStrategy Becomes Wall Street’s Biggest Story
Much like BTC, stock in MicroStrategy (MSTR), the first public company to make Bitcoin its core treasury reserve asset, has eclipsed its from its previous all-time high dating all the way back to March of 2000.
At the time, MSTR briefly peaked at $313 at the height of the dot-com bubble, before plummeting back below $1 for several years afterwards. Spending over two decades beneath $20, MSTR revitalized itself once it adopted its Bitcoin reserve strategy in 2020, and has peaked again in November 2024 at $379 per share.
MicroStrategy’s epic rise has inspired several other companies throughout the year to adopt a Bitcoin reserve strategy, including MetaPlanet, Semler Scientific, DeFi Technologies, and Genius Group. Now up over $13 billion on its investment while holding over 1% of the entire supply, MicroStrategy has become an epic story of how any company can be revitalized by embracing Bitcoin, rather than rejecting it.
What’s Next: The BOS Bull Market
In Q1 2025, the full BOS system is expected to go live, allowing cryptographically secured bridging of BTC from Bitcoin to other blockchains for the first time. This means that Bitcoin is about to unlock the decentralized functionality of the entire crypto ecosystem – functionality it has searched for over the past 15 years.
The pathway to activating Bitcoin scaling, privacy, programmability, and a native decentralized token economy has finally arrived. As institutional and national Bitcoin adoption take center stage next year, BOS is providing the technical power for Bitcoin to welcome in the next trillion dollars.
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