For most of us, 2020 has been a year of major upheaval and change. The events of this year did not pass by the crypto industry, which has seen both downs and new ups. Let's take a look at the key events of 2020 that affected the crypto industry the most.
Coronavirus pandemic
For the first time, COVID-19 was registered in China, in December 2019, but the whole world began to respond to the Coronavirus pandemic only in early 2020.
Markets reacted with panic to the situation with widespread lockdowns and quarantines, causing a collapse of the cryptocurrency known as "Black Thursday". As you can remember, the major currency dropped in value by 50% over the day. The crash resulted in liquidations as peaks in network congestion prevented many investors from adjusting their collateralized debt positions, and Maker was hit hard by the DAI losing its peg.
Bitcoin Halving
Bitcoin Halving is a halving of the reward for miners for each mined block. It is not tied to a specific date, it occurs every 210,000 blocks. Bitcoin halving has been the subject of heated debate over whether it will trigger new price highs. As we now see, those who predicted a rise in the price of Bitcoin were right. Although the growth factors in the value of the coin were different.
End of the bear market
The fall in the cryptocurrency market was followed by its stabilization, and then the rise in prices of top currencies. So, at the beginning of 2020, Bitcoin costs about $ 7200, but in February the main cryptocurrency broke the resistance barrier of $ 10,000, and the cost of Ether doubled. Following this news, the cryptocurrency market began to rally, foreshadowing the end of the bear market. Now the crypto market has revived and is growing rapidly.
Boom of Yield Farming
In the summer of 2020, the concept of liquidity mining became very popular. It's about the COMP token and the Compound decentralized lending protocol, which climbed to the top of DeFi ratings in less than a week after launch.
Despite the fact that liquidity mining existed even before Compound, because of the hype around COMP, the real madness around "yield farming" began. This was followed by the so-called "food tokens" which offered huge profits to any liquidity provider in DeFi.
DeFi Market Reaches $ 10 Billion TVL
In early 2020, the DeFi sector locked-in value (TVL) was over $ 600 million, but it wasn't until the summer that the niche really took off.
In early fall, over $ 10 billion was locked into Ethereum-based DeFi protocols, and the Metmask wallet has 1 million monthly active users. Today TVL DeFi is approaching $ 15 billion.
As the sector expands, key indicators suggest that decentralized finance will continue to grow.
Fighting stablecoins against hyperinflation
In 2020, stablecoins gained huge popularity. One of the reasons was the addition of collateral by DeFi users to the protocols. Also, Circle's partnership with the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and Airtm was a key factor. As you remember, Venezuela suffered greatly from hyperinflation. Cryptocurrency in this situation has become a real lifeline for the inhabitants of the country.
Visa adds payments in USDC
It was a surprise to everyone that Visa announced its willingness to work with Circle, which will partner with it to enable USD payments to 60 million merchants around the world. It is also planned to issue a special card for USDC payments, the ERC-20 token, which is pegged to the US dollar 1: 1.
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