Major Events in the Life of Bitcoin in 2020

There is no doubt 2020 has been the year of Bitcoin. These are the most relevant events in the life of the largest crypto in the market.

January 9: OKEx launches Bitcoin options for all its users. Until then, the tool was only available to customers who received a special invitation. In addition, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME Group) launches Bitcoin options trading. As a result, CME becomes a direct competitor to the regulated exchange Bakkt, which launched options trading on December 9.

January 15: Bitwise Asset Management withdraws its application to launch a Bitcoin ETF. The firm informs the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) it has made this decision "in the public interest and protection of investors."

January 22: Crypto exchange Huobi rolls out Huobi Brokerage, a brokerage platform aimed at institutional investors.

February 10: crypto exchange OKEx launches OKChain testnet and decentralized exchange OKEx DEx.

February 21: The Bank of Sweden, together with the consulting firm Accenture, starts to test its own digital currency - e-krona.

February 27: The SEC rejects the last request to launch a Bitcoin ETF.

March 4: The Supreme Court of India withdraws a directive from the Reserve Bank (RBI) prohibiting institutions from offering banking services to firms involved in crypto trading.

March 6: a French court equates Bitcoin to money. The decision is taken on February 26, but it was only announced in March.

March 12: Bitcoin drops by almost 20%, falling below $6,500. Earlier, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Adhanom Ghebreyesus, announces the spread of COVID-19 coronavirus infection in the world "could be described as a pandemic."

March 24: The US proposes creating a digital dollar to fight the coronavirus.

March 25: Southern District Judge Kevin Castel acknowledges the arguments of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that Telegram was selling unregistered securities and prohibits the distribution of Gram tokens.

April 8: Paxful launches Bitcoin P2P trading combined with physical gold.

April 10: The Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) launches trading in The Bitcoin Fund, a private equity fund from asset manager 3iQ.

May 11: the third halving of Bitcoin takes place. The block reward falls to 6.25 BTC from 12.5 BTC.

May 12: Pavel Durov announces the closure of the Telegram Open Network project.

May 18: BitMEX is accused of "innumerable flagrant violations of the law."

June 1: Canada implements a series of amendments aimed at regulating crypto companies as companies offering money transfer services.

June 18: crypto derivatives platform Binance Futures launches quarterly BTC/USD futures contracts with up to 125x leverage.

July 16: some unknown attackers hack into the Twitter accounts of Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and others. They post a series of messages about a fake distribution of 5,000 BTCs from unknown site Cryptoforhealth.

July 22: the Russian State Duma passes the law "On digital financial assets."

August 1: Bitcoin Core 0.20.1 node software is released. The main improvement is the resolution of the problem of "peers that misbehave" or users sending wrong blocks to the network.

August 12: Analysis software provider MicroStrategy, which is listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the ticker MSTR, acquires 21,454 BTC (about $250M when the transaction took place). As a result, MicroStrategy becomes the first public company to invest part of its capital in Bitcoin.

August 27: Fidelity Investments' Chief Strategist Peter Jubber opens a new Bitcoin indexed fund.

September 2: the Vienna and Singapore Stock Exchanges add Bitcoin and Ether based products.

September 8: some hackers steal more than $5M from crypto exchange ETERBASE.

September 22: the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) authorizes national banks to maintain the reserve assets that back stablecoins.

September 30: researchers from the Digital Currency Initiative at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) develop a solution to prevent blockchain attacks.

October 1: The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) files suit against derivatives exchange BitMEX and its owners, including its co-founder and CEO Arthur Hayes. They are accused of maintaining an unregistered trading platform and violating the CFTC's anti-money laundering and KYC rules.

October 6: the UK bans the sale of crypto derivatives to retail investors.

October 13: The Bank of Russia starts public consultations on the digital ruble.

October 21: The Bahamas rolls out its own digital currency. The country becomes the first in the world to issue a digital currency at the state level. The price of the Sand Dollar is linked to the Bahamian dollar, which is in turn pegged to the US dollar.

November 11: PayPal announces it is starting to offer access to Bitcoin as well as other cryptos for US users.

November 12: The Russian Ministry of Finance proposes a prison sentence for users who do not declare their cryptocurrencies.

December 16: The Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) announces it plans to launch crypto indexes during the second quarter of 2021. The tool is being developed in conjunction with CoinRoutes and will reflect the cryptos’ price dynamic and historical data.

During the morning of December 27, the price of Bitcoin broke a new record after growing above $27,500.

Today, Bitcoin is trading at around $26,974.