Cryptocurrencies .. From game codes to a trillion-dollar market

Eva Zalay in London Facebook's decision last month to rebrand it to Meta is in fact completely retroactive. Metaverse might seem like an evolving concept to us, where people create digital copies of themselves in order to interact with other people's avatars in the virtual world, but this idea is about 20 years old, and it's only been updated a bit.
The origins of digital assets – such as bitcoin and ether, non-fungible tokens, smart contracts, and the thousands of “cheap” currencies that are now in existence – can be traced back to video games where avatars play and sometimes even work, a representation of the fictional lives imagined by the humans who created them. .
What might seem unimaginable today - with cryptocurrency markets now worth more than $2 trillion - is that the forebears of these currencies were found in World of Warcraft and Second Life, virtual reality-based games popular in the old days. In the early 2000s, former child actor Brock Pierce, who ran for US President in 2020, realized that players were happy to buy crypto-tokens to take them to the next level rather than complete tasks in order to earn them.
“Just because something is intangible, doesn't mean it is worthless,” Pearce said as he recounted his account of hiring hundreds of people in China and South Korea to play video games and earn in-game tokens, so that he could then sell them to lazy customers. In the west.
Together with William Quigley, the current CEO of Worldwide Asset Exchange, the largest platform for non-fungible tokens (NFTs), Pierce has built a market for in-game tokens that is now worth $200 billion. In the process, they together laid the foundation for the cryptocurrency industry.
“After the World of Warcraft gold rush, the intellectual leap required to realize the value of bitcoin was very small,” says Pearce.
Pierce was an early adopter of Bitcoin, after an anonymous author using the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto published a research paper in October 2008 in which he explored proposals for a new technology called Blockchain, which relies on users' consent to start working, rather than working. as a central entity. That paper became the basis for a digital currency called Bitcoin, which could be "mined" using computers that solve the puzzles associated with it. The ceiling for the supply of bitcoin in the market is 21 million units.
Then, in January 2009, Nakamoto mined the first bitcoin, marking the start date of the blockchain and cryptocurrency. In May 2010, a Florida man paid 10,000 bitcoins (more than $600 million in today's prices) for two pizzas, the first ever cryptocurrency purchase.
It would be an exaggeration to say that what happened drew any attention. Interest rates fell in the wake of the global financial crisis and then central banks launched massive bond-buying programs in order to support their economies. But unlike the overall shake-up that the economy has faced, interest in Bitcoin has begun to grow.
First came the libertarians and computer experts, then the currency traders, and then the entire financial industry community, some of whom were fascinated by the technology that made it impossible to change or erase past financial transactions. Others, such as billionaire investor Michael Novogratz, have been drawn to bitcoin because of its scarcity in the market—it has a market cap of just 21 million units.
By 2011 Bitcoin became popular enough to gain traction on the trading platforms. These were the first exchanges - for example, MT Jukes based in Asia - catering to the region's retail investors whose appetites for bitcoin had become open due to their previous gaming backgrounds. They allowed early adopters to mine and trade cryptocurrencies as well.
The launch of trading platforms triggered the first Bitcoin price inflation, when the exchange rate jumped to $32 before collapsing to about $2 in 2011. The short-term rise in price put bitcoin on the map, according to Max Bunin, founder of B2C2 , one of the largest crypto-traded companies today, noting that the currency went through a series of significant price hikes, and each peak it reached was higher than the previous one.
“The big names we know as 'big stakes' whales got into the bitcoin market right before the 2013 bubble," says Bunin. At the time, the debt crisis in Greece and the subsequent bailout prompted many wealthy investors to buy cryptocurrencies in order to hedge as a last resort. “It was the first time Bitcoin was affected by macroeconomic events, so it became very important,” he adds.
But the rest of the world was still showing little interest, and largely ignored the launch of Tether, the first asset-backed currency created to connect the world of cryptocurrency and fiat money together. It was also then that the first ever initial coin offering, from Mastercoin, took place.
Almost no one noticed a request to launch a Bitcoin trading fund — by the Winklevoss brothers — in 2013. The arrival of the Ethereum blockchain system and its parent currency, Ether in 2015, the second cryptocurrency to be created, failed to make a rebound in mainstream funding, despite the key role Who is playing in the cryptocurrency markets today.
Ethereum's ability to carry data in its own code was an important innovation and forms the basis of decentralized finance markets, where algorithms perform all financial transactions, as well as settlement and other functions. This market is worth $236 billion and is, for many, the latest in the financial world.
The value of Bitcoin soared in 2017, when small investors around the world suddenly took an interest, as the price soared to more than $20,000. Initial coin offerings are also becoming common. The following year, the currency experienced its biggest crash yet, ushering in the so-called crypto winter, with many describing Bitcoin as a gimmick with no future.
The mood around cryptocurrencies then turned more positive in March 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic hit and led to an influx of hedge funds and family offices to buy bitcoin, due to limited bitcoin supplies. This led to a shift in the history of Bitcoin from an unsuccessful currency to the digital equivalent of gold for some. Then billionaire hedge fund managers added more weight to the rise in the price of bitcoin, attracting other institutional investors, as well as the attraction of banks and electric car tycoon Tesla, Elon Musk.
In the past 18 months, the popularity of the cryptocurrency markets has exploded and new assets such as non-fungible tokens have boomed. This hype has led to the emergence of thousands of alternative cryptocurrencies, such as Dogecoin, some of which come with questionable value propositions. On the other hand, other blockchain systems such as Cardano, Solana, and Polkadot have also appeared, with the aim of making this technology more efficient.
Bitcoin has had a bumpy ride and is still very volatile, but the general trend is on the rise, as the price of Bitcoin rose from about $0.08 in 2010, to reach a high of just under $67,000 in October from this year. And that's not a bad thing for a 13-year-old.

Cryptocurrencies .. a journey through time

2003 Second Life and World of Warcraft were launched, laying the foundation for some of the first virtual assets – such as in-game tokens that could be bought and sold.
2007, the global financial crisis erupted.
2008, Satoshi Nakamoto (pseudonym) publishes introductory meta-documents outlining bitcoin and its underlying technology, the blockchain.
2009, the first Bitcoin mined.
May 2010 First Bitcoin transaction as payment when a Florida man buys two pizzas for ten thousand Bitcoins.
July 2010 The trading platform, MT Jukes, was launched, which quickly gained popularity, and conducted 70 percent of all bitcoin trades by 2014.
2013, two billionaire twins, Winklevoss, submitted an application to the US Securities and Exchange Commission to create a bitcoin exchange fund. Mastercoin carried out its first initial coin offering.
2014, Tether, asset-backed coin launched. Ethereum raises funds before its launch by selling crypto tokens. The MT Jokes trading platform is collapsing after a major hack.
2015, Ethereum system launched.
2018, the collapse of the bitcoin price and its entry into the "crypto winter",
In 2020, Bitcoin prices collapsed due to the chaos caused by the Corona virus pandemic in the financial markets.
In 2021, the price of Bitcoin reached a record high while the Ethereum platform rose to an all-time high. Institutional investors, including banks, have entered the cryptocurrency space. Non-fungible tokens became popular and decentralized finance developed into a multi-billion dollar industry. Share it