2024 Hong Kong Web3 Event Review: Discussing Bitcoin Ecosystem Development and Future Trends

Recently, during the 2024 Hong Kong Web3 Carnival, a themed event focusing on the Bitcoin ecosystem was held in Hong Kong. The event brought together early Bitcoin miners and representatives of BTC Layer2 projects to reflect on the development history of Bitcoin mining and look forward to the future of the BTC ecosystem.

The co-founder and CEO of a certain wallet company shared his experiences as an early Bitcoin miner at the event and discussed the development prospects of BTC Layer 2 and AI technology. Here are the main points of his sharing:

The Development History of the Bitcoin Ecosystem

As an experienced miner, he witnessed the evolution of the Bitcoin ecosystem from nothing to something. From the early days of GPU mining, the birth of ASICs, to the emergence of China's first mining pool, and then to Bitcoin's first halving, the industry has gone through many ups and downs. The 2017 Ethereum ICO brought about a revolution in smart contracts and new asset issuance methods, followed by the DeFi Summer and the explosion of NFTs. Recently, the Bitcoin ecosystem has welcomed a new prosperity, with various inscriptions and second-layer network solutions emerging.

The launch of the Bitcoin ETF in January 2024 marks the official entry of Bitcoin as a mature financial asset into the public eye. Currently, the core issues that have plagued the industry for many years have been fundamentally clarified, and large-scale adoption of blockchain technology is expected to be achieved in the next one or two cycles.

The Rise of Institutional Mining

The opportunity for institutionalized and professional mining emerged during the bear market from the end of 2014 to 2015. At that time, the price of Bitcoin dropped significantly, forcing miners to optimize their electricity costs and shift towards corporate and large-scale operations. This prompted miners to relocate from urban mines with better conditions to areas with more competitive electricity costs, such as along the Dadu River in Sichuan and near pit power stations in Xinjiang.

Challenges of Overseas Mining

After going abroad, miners face many challenges, including legal frameworks, tax planning, mining operation and maintenance, equipment repair efficiency, and online rates. In addition, unstable electricity prices and the need for shutdowns due to special events also increase the complexity of overseas mining. Currently, some sovereign wealth funds have started to enter the mining sector, intensifying competition in the industry.

BTC Layer 2 Ecosystem Development

As the Bitcoin mainnet experiences long-term congestion, demand has begun to overflow, giving rise to a batch of sidechain and layer two network solutions. The main challenge facing the Bitcoin ecosystem is the limited support for smart contracts, and in the short term, it is necessary to bridge Bitcoin assets to layer two networks or EVM.

A certain wallet company offers an MPC-based multi-signature solution to enhance the security of funds during the bridging process. In the long run, with updates to Bitcoin Opcodes and the development of cross-chain communication technology, these issues are expected to be further improved.

The Prospects of AI and Blockchain Integration

The development of AI technology has brought efficiency improvements for individuals and enterprises. From a corporate perspective, there is an exploration of the combination of AI Agents and blockchain technology. In the future, there may be scenarios where AI Bots represent different entities to deploy smart contracts and interact on-chain.

In the next 3-5 years, we can expect to see mature prototypes of AI Agents conducting direct transactions on the blockchain and utilizing smart contracts. Based on this vision, a certain wallet company is unifying the underlying and risk control layers of its various wallet product lines, providing standard APIs to integrate AI Agent capabilities. The company plans to launch related product prototypes in the second half of this year.