2015: A long year in Bitcoin

Two thousand and fifteen has been a long year for bitcoin.

We’ve seen major bitcoin companies turn their back on bitcoin, removing any mention of bitcoin from their homepage or even changing their names to remove any bitcoin affiliations.

We’ve seen the banks adopt, not bitcoin, but the blockchain while they disregard the security provided by the incentives of bitcoin mining and ignore the virtues of decentralization.

We’ve seen major bitcoin companies give away thousands of bitcoins because an email told them to. And it doesn’t seem like their insurance company is buying their story that a lack of solid business practices is the same as a hack.

It’s been a long dark and cold year for bitcoin. The price has been mainly steady and low, with only the recent breakout to $500, a breakout that was quickly followed by devastating profit taking knocking the price back to $330-370.

But still, bitcoin endures.

More people know about Bitcoin now than ever before. Exciting new projects like the open source chrome extension ProTip shed some light on what it might be like to use bitcoin in the future. Automatically rewarding content creators while not inconveniencing users could be bitcoin’s long awaited killer app.

But what will become of Bitcoin in 2016?

More giants will fall. Wounded they march forward, their venture capital running on fumes and their ranks, once so full are now empty. They kept limping along in 2015, but in 2016 we should see some of these giants fall. They over promised and under delivered. Their hockey stick graphs never paid off.

I’ve learned there’s two kinds of people in the Bitcoin world. People who are motivated by technology and people who are motivated by greed. We have too many of the latter and not enough of the former. Bitcoin is starting to lose it’s roots and be overcome by too many greedy people with dollar signs in their eyes and a willingness to do anything for financial success.

But still, bitcoin endures.

I’ve seen the best minds in bitcoin ignored and displaced. I’ve seen them starving to death and left with ringing in their ears while the most worthless are constantly rewarded with advisor positions. I’ve seen rich startups wasting their money on vacations while so many others do so much with nothing. I’ve seen people who founded popular projects turn their back and call their former friends a cult. Nothing surprises me anymore.

But still, bitcoin endures.

I’ve lost a lot of my friends this year. People who used to do shows don’t do them anymore. But still, others have risen to fill their ranks because bitcoin is like a fever and for every person who is left ice cold, there’s always new people to take their place.

I’ve also lost friends literally. People who used to be here aren’t here anymore.

But still, bitcoin endures.

Bitcoin doesn’t care about your heart or your feelings. Bitcoin doesn’t care if the banks call it blockchain and try to harvest its organs while it’s still alive. Bitcoin is a superior monetary system and for all the bluster of the blocksize issue, all the fear of the fork, bitcoin still endures. It cannot be stopped.

Bitcoin endures.

-- Thomas Hunt, MadBitcoins