Introduction

Cryptocurrency is the digital form of currency that is decentralized and immune to alter and based upon blockchain technology where the transaction is very much secured and confidential. Bitcoin is considered to be the first cryptocurrency and most valuable digital currency untill now, which was launched in 2009. Since Bitcoin has been launched, there are thousands of such currencies that have been created, and many of them have been closed as well. We have observed many ups and downs in the crypto-world since the last decade, which has ultimately impacted the values of currency.

Movement of Major Cryptocurrencies

As numerous cryptocurrencies came into existence and hiked in their values, due to marketing. Whereas few of them were real in value and their market capitalization. When Bitcoin started, and it had no value. But in July 2010, its value was $0.08 per Bitcoin, and its price skyrocketed by 900% in just five days. Remarkably, one Bitcoin was equivalent to one USD in February 2011, and this was the first time when it tried to attract the attention of investors. It was a surprising day on 17th December 2017 when Bitcoin was priced at $19783.06, which was the all-time high in the history of any cryptocurrency to date. However, Bitcoin could not maintain its values and it fell on 7th December 2018 with the price at $3,300, a - 76% drop from the previous year, and a 15-month low.

One of the successful cryptocurrency Ethereum was originally launched in 2014 as an ICO. It was originally set as 2000 ETH/BTC (BTC was around $600 at the time). In August 2015, 1 ether was equivalent to $2.73, and its market cap was $164,330, 490. The value of Ethereum was $0.420897 on October 21, 2015, which was the lowest in its history. There was also a remarkable day in January 2018 when the price of Ethereum was recorded at an all-time high of $1,432.88.

New Entrants

There are approximately 2995 - 3000 cryptocurrencies in the market. However, it is also observed that the majority of the new entrants vanishes from the market in a short period due to various reasons. There are few well know cryptocurrencies in the market, which are XRP, Unicoin, Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin SV, Tether, Litecoin, EOS, Binance Coin, Stellar and so on. Each coin has its values against USD or BTC. These new coins are termed as Altcoins. Approximately 1,085 coins has been declared as dead Altcoins already, and even if we have a look at the last year, more than 500 cryptocurrency projects failed due to hacking, scam, and parody, or deceased. For example: SpaceBIT and DOGE.

Lost Cryptocurrencies

Approximately 3.79 million Bitcoin has been lost forever, and these numbers are 17% to 23% of existing Bitcoin. 2% is lost due to the mishandling of transactions and 2% by the strategic investors. Mt. Gox Japan-based cryptocurrency exchange has lost 850,000 Bitcoin as it has been hacked. Another news was that Chris Larsen (co-founder of Ripple,) had lost $44 billion. The Winkle Voss Twins Lost $1.6 billion and also mentioned that IT Worker Dumps $146 Million because of dumping old hard drives.

Fraud and Ponzi Scheme

Fraud and Ponzi schemes are usual in the world of finance, including cryptocurrency, as these kinds of schemes offer an unrealistic return for the investors. In the last decade, we have seen so many frauds in the cryptocurrency where investors were looted as they were unaware of many things and were preyed upon. Many official agencies caught such fraudulent and cracked their Ponzi schemes. Recently, three people were arrested in December 2019 for fraud of $722 million for a high-tech Ponzi scheme. Similarly, on October 16, the CFTC proclaimed that it was charging Circle Society and its proprietor, Mr. David Gilbert Saffron, with “fraudulent solicitation, misappropriation, and registration violations connecting to an $11 million worth of Bitcoin.” He lured the investors for a 300% return. Such type of fraud has been observed many times also in the last 10 years of cryptocurrency.

Affirmative Events

There are a few dates that are notable in the last decade.

Year 2012: Ripple’s XRP was launched, and now Ripple is competing with Swift.

Year 2014: Famous Company Microsoft starts accepting Bitcoin for Xbox games.

Year 2015: Barry Silbert brought Grayscale’s Bitcoin trust for accredited investors.

Year 2015: Mr. Vitalik Buterin launched the Ethereum blockchain.

Year 2017: CME brought Bitcoin futures for trading purposes.

Year 2019: Facebook announces cryptocurrency Libra.

Many countries drafted committees for the feasibility study and the scope of cryptocurrency. They are working on this, and we may get news in the upcoming days.

Conclusion

The above discussion reminds us of the happenings of the last ten years –some better than the rest. But one thing to note is that Bitcoin grew 8.9 million% over the last 10 years and no other commodities, shares, currency pairs have received such growth till now. Furthermore, the geopolitical scenario is getting favorable for cryptocurrency day by day, which is building trust among the new entrants. We can just wish the best of luck for the cryptocurrency community and reflect positive optimism from here.