Bitcoin’s Season 2: Resilience to Attack

The steady rise in the price of Bitcoin during its first season had begun to attract more and more hackers during 2012.

Coinbase was founded in San Francisco in 2012 in a complicated context for many exchange platforms.

The year 2013 is the year after Bitcoin’s first Halving.

On February 22, 2013, Bitcoin surpassed the $30 mark for the first time. It was in that same month that the Coinbase platform claimed the sale of over $1 million worth of Bitcoin in a single month. Of course, this is a record.

The effects of Halving continue to be felt with a very strong bull market throughout 2013.

Bitcoin surpassed the $1,000 mark to finally bring its record to $1,150 on December 4, 2013.

Logically, the media are beginning to take an interest in the Bitcoin phenomenon which is attracting more and more technophiles to this revolutionary new payment system.

Bitcoin’s opponents are also becoming increasingly vocal, calling Bitcoin a speculative bubble.

At the beginning of 2014, the use of Bitcoin continues to expand.

Zynga announces its intention to test the use of Bitcoin for integrated purchasing in 7 of its games running on Android and iOS. As a result, some Las Vegas casinos such as the D Las Vegas Casino Hotel and the Golden Gate Hotel & Casino are announcing that they are starting to accept Bitcoin.

The rise of Bitcoin also marks the return of hackers eager to take advantage of its success.

As Bitcoin is already well secured, these hackers choose to attack the weakest links: the exchange platforms and the users.

Gullible users are increasingly falling into scams that cause them to lose their precious Bitcoins for good.

At the beginning of February 2014, MtGox, one of the largest trading platforms at the time, suspended withdrawals citing a number of technical problems.

At the end of the same month, MtGox asked for a protection order from the Japanese justice for bankruptcy due to the theft of 850000 bitcoins!

The story of MtGox and its bankruptcy is a hard and bitter lesson for all the players in the Bitcoin Blockchain on the importance of security to ensure the sustainability of the technology.

Unfortunately, many more hacks of these trading platforms will take place in the future.

All of this does nothing to improve Bitcoin’s reputation with the general public.

The price of Bitcoin will also fall below $500 in April 2014.

The fall continues throughout 2014, and reaches a low point on January 14, 2015 at $183.

Despite the failure of MtGox, Bitcoin trading platforms continue to multiply, and Coinbase raises $75 million in January 2015.

This is a record for a company whose main activity is Bitcoin. It is worth noting that this record will be beaten in March 2015 by 21 Inc. which announces a fundraising of nearly $116 million!

Even so, Bitcoin is showing its resilience in the face of all these attacks and the increasing reports of its death.

Bitcoin is recovering stronger than before, and its adoption among merchants continues to grow. As of August 2015, 160,000 merchants already support Bitcoin as a payment method worldwide.

Bitcoin’s resilience is also reflected in miners who are making more and more computing power available to the network.

While the 100 PetaHash per second Hash Rate was reached in June 2014, the threshold of 1 ExaHash per second is exceeded less than 2 years later in January 2016.

The year 2016 is also very special for Bitcoin as it will mark its second Halving.

This second Halving takes place on July 9, 2016. The reward for the miners is decreased from 25 BTC to 12.5 BTC.

A bull market settles then before this second Halving of Bitcoin, and its price reaches $763 on June 19, 2016.

Bitcoin price corrects somewhat before this second Halving to fall back to $641 on July 9, 2016, which seems to disappoint some.

Bitcoin price evolution during its season 2

Bitcoin’s season 2 comes to an end, and the best is yet to come.