Money: A Timeline

The conventional story of money often is said to have begun with barter: a fisherman trades fish for a farmer's grain. Direct, simple, personal. While such exchanges undoubtedly occurred, many anthropologists argue that bartering was not the exclusive means of exchange. In place of barter, early economies ran on credit, trust, and social agreements.

In other words, debt (promises and obligations) existed before physical money did, anchoring early economic life in relationships and trust rather than stacks of coins. The double coincidence of wants necessary for barter to function smoothly was often rare, making it an inefficient primary system for ongoing community exchange.

As communities grew, the need arose to track these obligations. Memory is fickle, and precise record-keeping became vital. This led to the invention of tallies, including notches on sticks, knotted cords (quipus), and clay tablets. These were early forms of credit instruments, physical records of debts and promises. The Mesopotamians, for example, used clay tokens and envelopes to account for goods like sheep or grain, essentially managing complex credit systems. The ancient British split wooden tally sticks lengthwise, creating identical records for creditor and debtor. History's early ledgers represented an agreed-upon obligation.

From these tallying and IOU systems, debt emerged not as a consequence of money, but arguably as its precursor. Money and debt were indeed twins, though credit/debt may well have been the firstborn. Money, in this light, often arose as a way to quantify and transfer these obligations. It represented not just abstract "value," but a specific claim on future goods, services, or social responsibilities. This fundamental nature of money as a record of social agreement and obligation persists through every subsequent monetary innovation, as we’ll come to see.

Communities realized that more formalized tokens of these obligations were needed. On the Pacific island of Yap, massive limestone discs served this purpose. Their value lay in shared social consensus.
Ancient civilizations experienced cycles of debt accumulation, leading to defaults and debt jubilees, as in Mesopotamia. These patterns—credit expansion, default, crisis—were already visible thousands of years ago.

The advent of standardized metal coins around 650 BCE in Lydia (modern-day Turkey) marked a significant evolution. Gold and silver offered properties that shells, beads, or less standardized tokens could not easily match. They possessed a perceived intrinsic value due to their rarity and utility in adornment, resisted deterioration, and could be divided with relative precision. Unlike grain or cattle, they didn't spoil or require feeding. Their natural scarcity helped maintain their value. For a time, metal coinage appeared to perfect money's essential qualities.

With coins came royal authority. Kings stamped their images on metal, guaranteeing weight and purity. Rulers discovered that mixing base metals into gold and silver coins (debasement, as we say) created instant profit.

Before long, many coins in circulation were “lightweight” or contained less gold or silver than they used to. Yet by law or decree, the new coins had to be accepted at the same value as the old full-weight coins. The outcome was predictable: people hoarded the older, high-purity coins and spent the newer, cheapened coins as fast as possible. In essence, bad money drove out good money. Economists later labeled this principle Gresham’s Law.

Gresham’s Law neatly summarizes a recurring issue in monetary history: if two forms of money are supposed to be equal by law, people will favor the one that’s intrinsically less valuable for payments, and save or melt down the one that’s intrinsically more valuable. This perverse outcome undermines the currency and can lead to inflation and loss of trust, as was seen time and again in history.

The Roman denarius, initially almost pure silver under Augustus, degraded to less than 5% silver by the third century as emperors like Nero and Diocletian repeatedly debased the currency to fund imperial ambitions and wars. Medieval kings across Europe engaged in similar practices. Each act of debasement was effectively a default on the implied promise of the coin's value and a hidden tax on the populace, transferring real wealth from citizens to the state through the loss of purchasing power.

Seeing these issues with coinage, it’s easy to understand why societies began exploring alternatives. Paper money emerged as the next great monetary innovation. It first appeared in China, as early as the Tang dynasty (7th–8th century), people used promissory notes, and by the Song dynasty (11th century), the Chinese government was circulating the world’s first paper banknotes. Carrying a paper note was far easier than lugging around a bag of heavy coins, especially for large transactions. These paper bills were essentially IOUs from a trusted authority (usually the state or a bank), exchangeable for a certain amount of metal or goods.

Paper money took longer to catch on in Europe. It wasn’t until the 17th century that banks in Sweden and later England began issuing paper notes, but eventually it became common there too. This shift from metal to paper might seem like a radical break, but it continued the same pattern. Paper currency was another clever monetary innovation that masked the same familiar vulnerabilities.

It solved some problems: you could expand the money supply more easily and facilitate trade over long distances (no need to cart tons of coin to fund an army or finance a voyage). But it introduced new challenges. Now, the value of money hinged on confidence in an institution or the government’s promise. If too many notes were printed without enough reserves (whether grain, silver, or public trust) to back them, the currency could rapidly lose value.

Indeed, some of the earliest experiments with paper money ended in inflation and collapse – from over-issuance in China’s later dynasties to the notorious hyperinflation of the French Assignat during the 1790s, centuries later. In every case, the form of money had changed, but the core issue remained: maintaining trust and value.

By weaving together these historical threads, we see a clear theme. Money’s form keeps evolving, but each innovation often conceals old frailties. Early credit systems could crumble if trust broke down or records were lost. Greedy hands could corrupt coinage through debasement. Paper money could be abused by overprinting.

Gradually, this system of representative money, tied to metallic reserves, began its slow evolution towards fiat currency—money backed solely by government decree ("fiat") and public trust, rather than by any physical commodity.

The gold standard emerged gradually. Its development was one of the great monetary accidents of modern times, owing much to Britain's accidental adoption of a de facto gold standard in 1717, when Sir Isaac Newton, as master of the mint, set too low a gold price for silver, inadvertently causing silver coin to disappear from circulation. With Britain's industrial revolution and its emergence as the world's leading financial power, its monetary practices began to draw attention. As a result, an international system of fixed exchange rates was born.

Britain formalized its gold standard in 1821, defining the pound as 113 grains of gold.

The United States fixed the dollar at 23.22 grains in 1834, formally adopting the gold standard in 1900.

By the 1870s, a global system had formed. Germany abandoned silver after its unification in 1871 and chose gold instead. Other nations followed: the Netherlands in 1875, Belgium in 1878, with France gradually edging closer between 1873 and 1878. The transition accelerated due to the network effect of money. Once sufficient countries adopted gold, it became increasingly advantageous for others to follow. By the late 1870s, most major currencies were tied to gold, creating fixed exchange rates without formal agreements. London became the system’s center.

The system appeared elegant (spoiler: it was all but). Many believed arbitrage could cure every monetary ailment. Gold was supposed to flow freely between nations, automatically smoothing out imbalances. If Britain imported more than it exported, the theory stated gold would leave, shrinking the money supply, lowering prices, and eventually nudging exports up enough to pull gold back in.

But this façade of monetary simplicity masked a complex reality. Underpinning the entire ordeal was what John Maynard Keynes called the "rules of the game.” These rules stated that central banks should adjust interest rates to counteract gold flow imbalances, maintaining currency stability. In practice, central banks often deviated from these guidelines, prioritizing domestic economic objectives over adherence to the gold standard's automatic mechanisms. For instance, the Bank of England sometimes manipulated discount rates to manage domestic credit conditions, actions that could conflict with the expected automatic adjustments of the gold standard.

The gold standard's operation depended on specific historical conditions: an intellectual climate prioritizing currency stability, a political setting shielding authorities from pressure to direct policy elsewhere, and open markets linking flows of capital and commodities.

The outbreak of World War I in 1914 significantly disrupted this system. Governments suspended gold convertibility and prohibited gold exports to finance massive military expenditures, effectively dismantling the international gold standard. This suspension allowed for the issuance of inconvertible paper money, leading to fluctuating exchange rates and increased inflation during and after the war.

In the mid-1920s, a wave of stabilization began. Countries with hyperinflation, such as Austria, Germany, Hungary, and Poland, stabilized their situation by introducing new currencies tied to gold and supported by international loans. Meanwhile, nations like Britain, Sweden, Australia, and Switzerland restored the classical gold standard structure. By 1926, a global gold standard system had largely re-emerged.

However, the interwar gold standard lacked many previously supported stability conditions. Britain, previously the center of global finance, no longer held the economic strength or reserves required. Additionally, labor markets had become more rigid, and governments were now more accountable to voters demanding action against unemployment and recession. As economic pressures rose, these conditions weakened governments’ credibility in maintaining gold convertibility.

By 1929, the Great Depression severely tested this fragile system. Declining commodity prices and shrinking capital flows damaged many peripheral economies, prompting early exits from the gold standard in Latin America and other primary-producing regions. In 1931, crises in Austria and Germany triggered runs on central banks across Europe. Britain, losing reserves rapidly, abandoned the gold standard in September 1931. Many countries soon followed Britain’s lead, fragmenting the international monetary system into three major blocs by 1932:

- Countries still on gold

- The British-led sterling area

- Central and Eastern European nations employing exchange controls

This fragmentation, combined with insufficient cooperation and limited resilience to economic shocks, ultimately spurred drastic monetary reforms after World War II.

44 Allied nations created the Bretton Woods system, designating the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency, pegged to gold at $35 per ounce. This tied the other national currencies to the USD. Following World War II, the U.S. emerged as the dominant economic and military power, effectively backing global trade and financial systems with the dollar. With this, the U.S. had chief influence over international trade. Countries needed access to dollars to engage in global commerce, creating a foundational demand for the dollar.

By the 1960s, fundamental contradictions emerged. Growing U.S. trade deficits and inflation from Vietnam War spending strained the system. The Triffin Dilemma revealed the paradox of using a national currency as an international reserve asset. As foreign governments increasingly converted dollars to gold, U.S. reserves declined precipitously.

In early May 1971, pressure on the U.S. dollar mounted as it repeatedly hit the lower intervention limit against the Deutsche Mark. The Bundesbank was forced to intervene, buying USD 6 billion for DEM 22 billion to support the dollar. This expansion of the money supply stoked inflation, and on May 6, 1971, Germany’s Minister for Economic Affairs, Karl Schiller, ordered the D-Mark to float temporarily, effectively taking West Germany out of the Bretton Woods system and ending sales of Deutsche Marks for dollars.

Over the following three months, the D-Mark strengthened sharply while the dollar dropped roughly 7.5 percent against it. Germany’s move triggered a cascading reaction: other nations began demanding gold in exchange for their dollar reserves, exposing the fragility of Bretton Woods.

Two months later came the Nixon Shock—on August 15, 1971, the United States suspended dollar convertibility into gold and imposed a 10 percent import surtax. Most major economies soon allowed their currencies to float against the dollar. By December 1971, the Smithsonian Agreement attempted to restore order through adjusted exchange rates and wider fluctuation bands, but it collapsed within 15 months as speculation surged again, first hitting Switzerland in early 1973.

Major global currencies began to float by 1973, the dollar’s value plunged, and inflation surged to levels unseen since the 1940s.

The 1973-74 oil crisis, when OPEC's Arab members embargoed oil exports to the U.S. As oil prices quadrupled, triggering inflation and recession, the Nixon administration secretly negotiated the landmark 1974 Saudi-American deal, cementing the petrodollar system. This U.S.-Saudi agreement required Saudi Arabia to price all oil exports in dollars and invest surplus petrodollars in U.S. bonds and assets. In exchange, America guaranteed Saudi security through arms and military protection while purchasing Saudi oil.

The arrangement soon extended across OPEC, with virtually all members pricing oil in dollars by the late 1970s, establishing the de facto rule of dollar-denominated global oil trade.

Federal debt held by the public has jumped from 25% of GDP in 1980 to 99% in 2025, and interest now rivals defense spending as the Treasury’s largest line item.

By 2007, derivatives outstanding reached $596 trillion in notional value, ten times global GDP. A hiccup in U.S. subprime mortgages metastasized into a worldwide banking crisis.

On October 31, 2008, an unknown developer (or group) under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto published a white paper titled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.

Bitcoin's network launched on January 3, 2009. A basic stack-based language with limited opcodes for simple transactions was introduced. Several opcodes were disabled by Satoshi Nakamoto for security concerns.

On May 22, the network’s first recorded exchange of value occurred when Laszlo Hanyecz traded 10,000 BTC for two pizzas.

On August 15, a hacker exploited an overflow flaw to create 184 billion BTC. Developers issued a fix within hours, invalidating the fraudulent outputs and forking the chain to restore the 21 million BTC limit.

GPU mining replaced CPUs as difficulty rose.

The Federal Reserve launched QE2 in late 2010, injecting another $600 billion to spur the U.S. economy.

The world economy began a fragile recovery while Europe plunged into a sovereign debt crisis. In May 2010, Greece received a €110 billion EU/IMF bailout, the first ever rescue of a Eurozone country. To prevent contagion, global policymakers set up a €750 billion emergency fund days later.

Bitcoin's first price boom occurred in 2011. The exchange rate hit $1 per BTC around February, then surged to around $30 by June before crashing. This year saw Bitcoin's use in illicit markets: the darknet site Silk Road (launched early 2011) fueled adoption as users exchanged BTC for drugs. Security proved shaky. Mt. Gox, then the largest Bitcoin exchange, was hacked in June 2011, leading to a flash crash.

In August 2011, amid a U.S. debt-ceiling standoff, S&P downgraded the U.S. credit rating from AAA for the first time in history.

BIP-16 introduced Pay-to-Script-Hash (P2SH) addresses, enabling multi-signature scripts and other complex transactions (activated April 2012). Before P2SH, anyone creating a multi-signature wallet (requiring, say, 2 of 3 keys to spend) had to embed the entire script with all public keys directly into the transaction output, making transactions bulky and expensive. P2SH solved this by allowing users to hash the script into a compact 20-byte fingerprint.

This elegant solution shifted the complexity and cost burden from the sender to the recipient, made multi-signature wallets practical for everyday use, and laid the groundwork for more sophisticated smart contracts on Bitcoin without bloating the blockchain.

In November, Bitcoin’s first halving cut the block reward from 50 BTC to 25.

The European Central Bank cut interest rates and conducted emergency lending operations. On July 26, 2012, ECB President Mario Draghi vowed to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro. The ECB soon launched its OMT bond-buying program. Greece secured a second bailout with debt write-downs in March. By late 2011, Greek bonds traded at deep discounts as default loomed. The ECB also cut its deposit rate to 0%.

The Federal Reserve undertook QE3, an open-ended bond purchase program started in September 2012, expanding its balance sheet past $2.5 trillion.

2013 was Bitcoin's breakout year. Price rocketed from $13 in January to over $1,100 by December. Drivers included a Cyprus banking crisis in March 2013 that led some savers to seek refuge in BTC, as well as rising adoption in China. Development advanced too. BIP-32 (hierarchical deterministic wallets) and BIP-39 (seed mnemonic phrases) were introduced in 2013, greatly improving wallet security and user experience.

Bitcoin had to navigate a blockchain fork in March 2013 when a software update (Bitcoin v0.8) accidentally created an incompatible chain. Miners and developers coordinated within hours to revert to the old software, reuniting the chain.

In October, U.S. authorities shut down Silk Road, seizing 26,000 BTC.

December brought volatility: China's central bank banned banks from touching Bitcoin, triggering a sharp crash off all-time highs.

By year-end, the eurozone exited recession, and the Fed began tapering its $85 billion/month QE in December.

Mt. Gox, handling over 70% of Bitcoin trades, abruptly collapsed in February, announcing the loss of 850,000 BTC. The failure was due to long-running hacks and mismanagement. The exchange was found to be negligent in securing user funds. Many expected Bitcoin to collapse; instead, the network continued producing blocks.

In early 2014, Bitcoin Core introduced standardized support for the OP_RETURN opcode, allowing users to embed up to 80 bytes of arbitrary data in transactions. Before this, people stored metadata by creating fake unspendable outputs that permanently bloated Bitcoin's UTXO set, the database every node must maintain. OP_RETURN created outputs that are provably unspendable and can be pruned, solving this problem. It became the foundation for timestamping services, proof-of-existence protocols, colored coins, and overlay protocols like Omni Layer. The 80-byte limit was a deliberate compromise between enabling legitimate use cases and discouraging blockchain spam.

The ECB cut its deposit rate below zero in June (historic first).

The U.S. Federal Reserve ended its QE program in October 2014 after six years of bond-buying, having swollen its balance sheet to $4.5 trillion. The Bank of Japan expanded its QE in October to combat deflation. A global oil price crash from June to December 2014 reshaped the inflation outlook.

A ruble crisis in December 2014 forced Moscow to hike rates to 17% overnight.

As Bitcoin adoption grew, its 1MB block size limit, a hard-coded cap on the amount of data in each block, became a severe bottleneck. This led to unprecedented levels of congestion, slow transaction times, and soaring transaction fees. A civil war over how to scale the network erupted between 2015 and 2017. 

Two factions emerged: 

- Big Blockers: This camp, which included some early developers, major mining pools, and corporations, advocated for a hard fork to increase the block size limit. Proposals included Bitcoin XT (8MB) and Bitcoin Classic (2MB). Their goal was to keep transactions cheap and fast, allowing Bitcoin to scale as a global payment system to compete with Visa. 

- Small Blockers: This camp, led by Bitcoin Core developers and a large contingent of individual node operators, fiercely opposed a hard fork. They wanted to keep the 1MB limit to prioritize Bitcoin's integrity and security. Their core fear was that larger blocks would increase the cost of running a full node (due to storage and bandwidth requirements), forcing individuals off the network and leading to the centralization of nodes in corporate data centers, thus destroying Bitcoin's core value proposition. 

The Small Blockers solution, proposed by developer Pieter Wuille, was a soft fork (a backward-compatible upgrade) called Segregated Witness (SegWit). This solution, formalized in BIP 141, solved two problems at once: 

- Scaling: It segregated (moved) the digital signature data, or witness, from the main part of the transaction to a new witness field. This made transactions lighter in the main block, creating more space and effectively increasing the block size limit to a theoretical 2-4MB without a hard fork. 

- Transaction Malleability: It fixed a long-standing, vexing bug in Bitcoin's code that allowed transaction IDs (TXIDs) to be altered before they were confirmed. This fix was the critical and necessary prerequisite for building Layer 2 scaling solutions like the Lightning Network. 

Miners and large companies initially opposed SegWit, as it reduced fee pressure and, in their view, was not a sufficient scaling solution. The conflict climaxed in 2017 with the New York Agreement (or Segwit2x), a closed-door meeting of 50+ companies that tried to force a compromise: activate SegWit now, but also commit to a 2MB hard fork later. 

This takeover attempt was met with fierce resistance from the Small Blocker users. The stalemate was broken by a grassroots movement known as the User-Activated Soft Fork (UASF), formalized in BIP 148. This movement coordinated a date (August 1, 2017) on which their nodes would reject any blocks from miners that were not signaling support for SegWit.

Faced with the credible threat of having their blocks orphaned by the network's economic nodes, the miners capitulated. SegWit was locked in and activated in August 2017.

The Big Blockers, led by Bitmain, were still not satisfied and hard-forked away from Bitcoin to create Bitcoin Cash (BCH).

BIP-66 (strict signature encoding) was activated in July, fixing OpenSSL-related vulnerabilities.

The Fed raised interest rates in December 2015 by 0.25%, its first hike since 2006.

Several Bitcoin Improvement Proposals converged into the Segregated Witness (SegWit) plan, and was coded in 2016 (BIP-141) as a soft fork. First Lightning beta transactions on Bitcoin's testnet succeeded in 2016. Security and stability improved via soft forks BIP 68/112/113 (activated mid-2016), enabling CheckSequenceVerify and relative timelocks.

In June, the UK's Brexit referendum shocked observers as Britain voted to leave the EU, sending the British pound to a 31-year low.

In July, Bitcoin's second halving reduced mining rewards from 25 to 12.5 BTC.

India undertook a radical demonetization on Nov 8, 2016, banning 86% of cash in circulation overnight.

2017 was a landmark year as Bitcoin scaled and split. The Segregated Witness (SegWit) upgrade finally activated on August 24, 2017

Japan formally legalized Bitcoin as a payment method in April 2017, the first country to do so.

The U.S. Federal Reserve raised rates three times (to 1.5% by year-end) and began quantitative tightening (QT) in October.

U.S. regulators approved the first Bitcoin futures. CBOE launched BTC futures trading on Dec 10, CME on Dec 17.

2018 began with a crypto market crash. Bitcoin fell from around $20k to around $6k by February. Despite the price collapse, Bitcoin's technology development surged forward. Developers continued testing Taproot and Schnorr signatures.

Major hacks hit crypto, including a $530M Coincheck hack in Japan in January.

In March, the Lightning Network went live on mainnet (beta), allowing users to open payment channels for near-free instant BTC transfers.

The SEC cracked down on illegal ICOs, and in June, a senior SEC official stated that Bitcoin is not a security.

Rootstock (RSK) introduced smart contract capabilities via sidechain.

Turkey's lira and Argentina's peso each plunged around 40-50%.

Bakkt, a venture by ICE (NYSE's parent), launched testing of a physically settled Bitcoin futures platform in December.

Fidelity announced a new crypto custody division.

2019 marked a Bitcoin revival. After finding a floor near $3k, BTC's price surged to around $14,000 by June.

Fidelity Digital Assets went live in 2019, offering crypto custody and trade execution for institutional clients.

In June, developers published BIPs 340-342 detailing the Taproot/Schnorr upgrade.

In October, Bakkt (owned by Intercontinental Exchange) launched its physically settled Bitcoin futures.

By late 2019 Taproot's code was merged into Bitcoin Core, awaiting activation.

The COVID-19 pandemic year was a rollercoaster for Bitcoin. On March 12, 2020 (Black Thursday), Bitcoin's price plunged around 50% in a single day to around $4,000 amidst a global liquidity panic. But as central banks unleashed unprecedented stimulus, Bitcoin rebounded spectacularly.

In March 2020, central banks unleashed unlimited support. The U.S. Fed slashed rates back to 0% and, on March 23, 2020, committed to unlimited QE. The Fed also opened emergency facilities to buy corporate bonds. The U.S. enacted over $3 trillion in relief bills. China fast-tracked its digital yuan (e-CNY) pilot in several cities.

Bitcoin saw its third Halving in May 2020, cutting mining rewards from 12.5 to 6.25 BTC per block.

In August, MicroStrategy became the first public company to deploy significant treasury reserves into Bitcoin, buying $250 million.

Square invested $50 million in October. PayPal launched a new service letting 300+ million users buy, sell, and spend Bitcoin in October. Developers finalized the Taproot upgrade code by October 2020.

In December, insurance giant MassMutual put $100 million into BTC.

Bitcoin hit escape velocity in 2021, reaching new all-time highs. By April 2021, BTC's price blasted to around $64,000.

By December 2021, U.S. CPI reached 7% (a 39-year high), and eurozone inflation hit around 5%.

In May, China, which for years hosted around 50-60% of global hashpower, banned Bitcoin mining. This caused a 50% drop in Bitcoin's network hash rate in June.

In June 2021, El Salvador made the unprecedented move of adopting Bitcoin as legal tender alongside the U.S. dollar.

The ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO), based on CME futures, began trading on the NYSE in October. It drew over $1 billion in assets in days. U.S. Bank launched a crypto custody service in October. Grayscale filed to convert $GBTC to a Spot ETF in October 2021.

The long-awaited Taproot upgrade activated on November 14, 2021, bringing Schnorr signatures and improved scripting that enhanced privacy and smart contract flexibility.

2022 was tumultuous for Bitcoin, marked by a harsh bear market. From around $47k in January, Bitcoin's price ground down to about $16k by year-end. Hash rate hit new highs above 250 EH/s in late 2022.

In May 2022, the collapse of the Terra/Luna algorithmic stablecoin ecosystem vaporized $60 billion and sparked a credit crisis. As the price of UST fell, it triggered the death spiral. In the span of a single week, the $50 billion Terra/LUNA ecosystem fell to practically nothing. Bitcoin’s price collapsed by over 70% in the aftermath.

Major crypto firms like Celsius and Three Arrows Capital imploded by June.

The SEC denied Grayscale's Spot ETF application in June 2022.

The Federal Reserve delivered four consecutive 0.75% rate hikes over the summer-fall, lifting the Fed funds rate from 0% in March to around 4.5% by December. The Fed also began quantitative tightening, shrinking its balance sheet by about $400 billion in H2 2022. The ECB hiked rates from -0.5% to +2.0% within months.

The DXY index hit a 20-year high in September. In response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Western nations froze about $300 billion of Russia's FX reserves in March. 2022 saw net central bank gold purchases above 1,100 tons, the highest since 1967.

In October 2022, the EU finalized MiCA, a comprehensive crypto regulation framework.

In November, FTX, one of the world's largest and most trusted centralized exchanges, was revealed to be insolvent and filed for bankruptcy. The unraveling began on November 2, when a scoop from CoinDesk revealed the balance sheet of SBF's other company, Alameda Research.

BIP-119 introduced Ordinals and inscriptions on Bitcoin in November 2022.

2023 saw Bitcoin recover. Prices rebounded from around $16k in January to around $35k by November.

Starting in January 2023, users found they could embed arbitrary data in Bitcoin transactions using the Ordinals protocol.

The annual Bitcoin Core upgrade (v25.0) included improvements.

Bitcoin's network hash rate exceeded 400 EH/s by September. Public Lightning capacity reached around 6,000 BTC by late 2023.

In March, several U.S. banks collapsed (Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank), and the Fed intervened with a new lending facility (BTFP) to backstop banks.

In early May, the mempool backlog exceeded 400,000 unconfirmed transactions, surpassing congestion seen in previous bull runs.

BlackRock's June 2023 filing for a spot Bitcoin ETF was seen as a new era, as the suits began to roll in.

D.C. Circuit Court ruled in favor of Grayscale in August 2023.

In December 2023, developer Robin Linus published the BitVM white paper, introducing a method to run arbitrary computation verification on Bitcoin without any consensus changes. BitVM uses an optimistic rollup-like approach where a prover claims a computation result off-chain, and a verifier can challenge it through an interactive fraud proof protocol that unfolds over multiple Bitcoin transactions. The system works by breaking down complex programs into simple NAND gates that can be expressed using Bitcoin's existing script opcodes combined with Taproot's capabilities. If a dispute arises, the verifier forces the prover to commit to each step of the computation on-chain, then identifies and proves any false claim in the execution trace. While BitVM requires significant on-chain data for disputes and only works practically between two parties (prover and verifier), it demonstrated that Bitcoin could theoretically support Turing-complete smart contracts and advanced applications like bridging to other chains, all without a single protocol upgrade. This sparked renewed excitement about Bitcoin's programmability potential using only its existing primitives.

Bitcoin's price crossed $100,000 in early 2024.

On January 10, 2024, the SEC granted accelerated approval to 11 Spot Bitcoin ETPs simultaneously, including products by BlackRock, Fidelity, Invesco, VanEck, and others. This watershed decision opened the floodgates for trillions in asset-manager capital to flow into Bitcoin. Within days, several ETFs launched. By mid-2024, over $50 billion had flowed into U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs. Roughly 70+ companies globally had significant Bitcoin reserves by late 2024. Total BTC held in public treasuries exceeded 400,000 BTC by end-2024.

Visa partnered with several Lightning startups in 2024 to enable instant BTC-to-fiat payments.

In April 2024, Bitcoin underwent its fourth Halving, smoothly reducing the block subsidy from 6.25 to 3.125 BTC.

In June 2024, the annual Bitcoin Core upgrade (v25.0) included improvements to P2P encryption (BIP-324).

Bitcoin continued its ascendancy in 2025, reaching levels once deemed fantasy.

Bitcoin's price crossed $100,000 in early 2025 and climbed further, trading around $105k-110k by November.

On March 6, 2025, the White House issued an executive order establishing a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. The order explicitly acknowledges Bitcoin as digital gold with strategic value due to its fixed supply cap of 21 million coins. It mandates that Bitcoin be held as permanent reserve assets of the United States that shall not be sold.

In Q2 2025, the long-discussed Schnorr Musig2 upgrade was merged, enabling threshold signatures.