This year was a year filled with all types of Crypto news and events. We saw billionairres (mostly parked on Twitter), governments, exchanges, influencers and celebrities all fight for their 15 minutes of fame in the Crypto spotlight. The news and events have and will continue to make the development and adoption of Cryptocurrencies central to new policies, regulations, inflation, provide access to money and financial instruments to billions of people worldwide. This prospect, though turbulent and sometimes seemingly an easy target for fraudsters, means Cryptocurrency is proving to be a voice for the voiceless and resourceless multitudes crushed under bank fees, remittance charges and straight up alienated  from participating in financial progress for them and their families. With all that prelude out of the way, let´s explore this year´s most covered news in the Crypto´s sphere and even in mainstream media.

Dogecoin´s shameless promotion

The home of Crypto worshippers aka enthusiasts is Twitter and I believe the best place to start is with Elon Musk. No single person exerts the power and influence that Elon Musk does in Crypto, not least because he has trillionairre status and about 67M followers on Twitter. Firstly, he quite possibly helped shill and pump Dogecoin to stratos heights. However, and to what felt like a bucket of ice water thrown on them, when many speculated that he would further "send Dogecoin to the Moon" during a highly anticipated Saturday Night Live show(SNL) appearance, he spectacularly didn´t. In fact, with the help of his mother, Dogecoin was shunned. That as you could imagine sent Dogecoin plunging and it hasnt recoved previous levels. Though, Dogecoin is backed by Elon Musk (he has some of his trusted associates overlooking the projects and sharing relevant developments), since that last fall and failure to moon to 1USD, this meme coin has not made eye catching news. In fact, it´s shine has been somewhat stolen by other Dog meme coins like Shiba Inu which boasts a strong following AKA Shiba Inu Army. To conclude, the role of Elon´s tweets and the pumping effect is so crazy that as of now many dog meme coins such as Baby Floki (named afteer Elon´s newly acquired dog) and other´s featuring his name like Elongate have seen the light of day. You can find all these coins on CoinMarketCap here. [DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH]

Bitcoin´s Enviromental Worries

The same Elon Musk, caused Bitcoin, the graddaddy of all Crypto currencies to spin out of control after announcing that Tesla would no longer accept it for purchases of their vehicles. That tweet, which had a serious tone in contrast to his other Tweets ( which people take seriously and rally behind many senseless meme coins all the same). Two hours following the publication of that tweet, Bitcoin dropped from $54,819 to $45,700! Even though that Tweet affected Bitcoin and consequently all the other cryptocurrencies, it helped raise important questions sorrounding the environmental impact of mining power required. Many Crypto maximalists then came out to point out the potential of Bitcoin in driving the propagation of clean energies. Since then we have seen how in fact, one country has made that a reality. I will discuss that piece of news later in this article.

China bans Bitcoin and all Cryptocurrencies

Before China banned Bitcoin, it´s mining and other Cytocurrencies or ALT Coins, it was leading the world in it´s production. It is worthy to note that one concern was environmental since Chinese miners were using  mostly coal energy, therefore an unclean source. The reasons for banning Cryptocurrencies by China have mainly being attributed to it´s growing ambition for tighter controls of the economy and money flows as well as it´s desire to launch their own digital currency. The ban has seen many miners leave China and establish Bitcoin and other currency mining in welcoming countries like Kazakhstan and even the US. To date, more and more countries, especially with clean and renewable energy sources have seen the China ban as an opportunity to get a piece of this digital currency or asset pie. Direct consequences of this action have been that the US has overtaken China as the number 1 Bitcoin mining nation and major exchanges, especially those based in China like Huobi have been forced to suspend all China-based user accounts by end of this year. All in all, this ban, shook Bitcoin but did not destroy it and many believe this demonstrates that Bitcoin and many solid cryptocurrencies are immutable. What do you think?

El Salvador makes Bitcoin Legal Tender

Curiously, El Salvador, spanish name for The Saviour, has seen many Crypto enthusiasts hail the move to make Bitcoin a legal tender as a positive precedent for many countries to liberate themselves from financial and economic hostage of basing their currencies on the US dollar. You can´t blame them, as could be noted by pushback and threats when El Salvador decided on this route from world economic and financial authorities like the IMF. The reaction of the move to make Bitcoin a legal tender had mixed reception for El Salvadoreans. For many who see the president as authoritarian, the Bitcoin move was seen as another control mechanism while others welcomed the move as a way to empower millions of the country´s bankless. One of the most noted benefits has been the savings many locals have enjoyed in remittance charges. In fact many remittance companies that have exploited the fact that many bankless individuals depend on them to receive financial support from family members living abroad. On top of that, el Salvador started buying Bitcoins, news which was tweeted by the president and took advantage of its volcavic power to power Bitcoin mining. As we speak, El Salvador continues to mine Bitcoin thanks to it´s volcanic power and with the first profit, has started building a  pet hospital. Other tweets show how users can now purchase from coffeshops like Starbucks using Bitcoin through the Lightning Network.

A couple gets married on the Etherium blockchain

As surreal as this headline was, it was true! Back in March, Peter Kacherginsky and Rebecca Rose, a Californian couple decided to forever record their union on the Etherium blockchain. Unsuprisingly, both are Coinbase employees so they understand the Blockchain from their work in this NYSE traded exchange. We can say they got the best for both worlds, as this marriage was in addition to their traditional Jewish ceremony. I guess this means that in addition to a traditional ceremony, one can boroadcast their marital bliss on the blockchain eternally. I wonder and I am surpised no agenies have jumped in to offer similar marriage contracts proclaiming their immutability, decentralization and trustlessness. That also opens another question in terms of divorces, because "let´s face it" most marriages end in divorce...So would that be another smart contract on the blockchain? In terms of cost, this blockchain registration was about 500USD. Aparently the whole operation consisted of 2,218 lines of code and the smart contract’s creation cost 0.2548 ETH  based on the price then about 500 USD in today´s value.

John McAfee commits suicide in a Spanish jail

While John McAfee´s most prominent contribution, would be the McAfee Antivirus software he was in the news in the last 2 years after being arrested in Spain. He is infamous in the Crypto space, for his outrageous tweets like this one below where he made ambitious forecasts for Bitcoin prices and promising to chow "his member" if the prediction did not come true. His Twitter account is still online and has 1.1 million followers. It is worth noting that his wife, Janice McAfee complained that John´s treatment was unjust since as she stated "Elon Musk was doing the same thing" but unpunished . John was intercepted in Spain about to board a plane to Turkey. This was due to an arrest warrant from the US for failing to file tax returns for four years. His suicide apparently came as he was just about to be extradited  to the US.

Vitalik Buterin burns 6 Billion Shiba Inu Tokens

As a publicity stunt, the team behind Shiba Inu, a token which can be traded on OKEx, Binance and Crypto.com , sent Shiba Inu tokens to Etherium´s founder Vitalik Buterin. They got publicity alright, but its was not what they expected. Vitalik , to dissuade this and future efforts of Crypto manipulation and discourage expensive publicity stunts, burnt 90% of the tokens he received. The value according to the prices then was about 6 Billion USD or  410 trillion tokens. He also donated 10% remaining, 50 trillion SHIB tokens, to the India Covid Fund. The accompanying transaction message by Vitalik  for the incidence was:

I’ve decided to burn 90% of the remaining Shiba tokens in my wallet. The remaining 10% are going to be transferred to a [not yet decided] charity with similar values to cryptorelief [preventing large-scale loss of life] but with a more long-term orientation.

There is more news regarding Crypto this year, and unfortunately it involved scams and other shady business. Check out this article where I covered the different types of Crypto scams and most importantly, how to avoid them.

Looking forward to your views and opinion in the comments below....

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